“This man!” was her startled exclamation. “It is not possible; I do not know him; he does not know me. I never talked with him but once in my life, and that was to say words I am not only willing but anxious for him to repeat.”
“Miss Dare,” the District Attorney pursued, “when you say this you show how completely you have been deceived. The conversation to which you allude is not the only one which has passed between you two. Though you did not know it, you held a talk with this man at a time in which you so completely discovered the secrets of your heart, you can never hope to deceive us or the world by any story of personal guilt which you may see fit to manufacture.”
“I reveal my heart to this man!” she repeated, in a maze of doubt and terror that left her almost unable to stand. “You are playing with my misery, Mr. Ferris.”
The District Attorney took a different tone.
“Miss Dare,” he asked, “do you remember a certain interview you held with a gentleman in the hut back of Mrs. Clemmens’ house, a short time after the murder?”
“Did this man overhear my words that day?” she murmured, reaching out her hand to steady herself by the back of the chair near which she was standing.
“Your words that day were addressed to this man.”
“To him!” she repeated, staggering back.
“Yes, to him, disguised as Craik Mansell. With an unjustifiable zeal to know the truth, he had taken this plan for surprising your secret thoughts, and he succeeded, Miss Dare, remember that, even if he did you and your lover the cruel wrong of leaving you undisturbed in the impression that Mr. Mansell had admitted his guilt in your presence.”
But Imogene, throwing out her hands, cried impetuously:
“It is not so; you are mocking me. This man never could deceive me like that!”
But even as she spoke she recoiled, for Hickory, with ready art, had thrown his arms and head forward on the table before which he sat, in the attitude and with much the same appearance he had preserved on the day she had come upon him in the hut. Though he had no assistance from disguise and all the accessories were lacking which had helped forward the illusion on the former occasion, there was still a sufficient resemblance between this bowed figure and the one that had so impressed itself upon her memory as that of her wretched and remorseful lover, that she stood rooted to the ground in her surprise and dismay.
“You see how it was done, do you not?” inquired Mr. Ferris. Then, as he saw she did not heed, added: “I hope you remember what passed between you two on that day?”
As if struck by a thought which altered the whole atmosphere of her hopes and feelings, she took a step forward with a power and vigor that recalled to mind the Imogene of old.
“Sir,” she exclaimed, “let that man turn around and face me!”
Hickory at once rose.
“Tell me,” she demanded, surveying him with a look it took all his well-known hardihood to sustain unmoved, “was it all false—all a trick from the beginning to the end? I received a letter—was that written by your hand too? Are you capable of forgery as well as of other deceptions?”
The detective, who knew no other way to escape from his embarrassment, uttered a short laugh. But finding a reply was expected of him, answered with well-simulated indifference:
“No, only the address on the envelope was mine; the letter was one which Mr. Mansell had written but never sent. I found it in his wastepaper basket in Buffalo.”
“Ah! and you could make use of that?”
“I know it was a mean trick,” he acknowledged, dropping his eyes from her face. “But things do look different when you are in the thick of ’em than when you take a stand and observe them from the outside. I—I was ashamed of it long ago, Miss Dare”—this was a lie; Hickory never was really ashamed of it—“and would have told you about it, but I thought ‘mum’ was the word after a scene like that.”
She did not seem to hear him.
“Then Mr. Mansell did not send me the letter inviting me to meet him in the hut on a certain day, some few weeks after Mrs. Clemmens was murdered?”
“No.”
“Nor know that such a letter had been sent?”
“No.”
“Nor come, as I supposed he did, to Sibley? nor admit what I supposed he admitted in my hearing? nor listen, as I supposed he did, to the insinuations I made use of in the hut?”
“No.”
Imbued with sudden purpose and energy, she turned upon the District Attorney.
“Oh, what a revelation to come to me now!” she murmured.
Mr. Ferris bowed.
“You are right,” he assented; “it should have come to you before. But I can only repeat what
