“I didn’t say so, Mister Captain West.  I told you my moniker, that’s all.  Jim here brought me up, but he ain’t no father to me, and his wife ain’t my mother.  It took me a while to find that out, but I got the thing straight at last.  I saw then just what those two were driving at; first I didn’t take no particular interest in the scheme; then I got to thinking until finally I hated that soft, downy thing; damn her, she’d robbed me, and I had a right to my share even if I had to steal it.”

“What soft, downy thing?”

“Natalie Coolidge!  Bah, I went out to see her once.  Jim took me and we hid in the garden; and when I came back I was raving mad.  Lord, why should that little idiot have everything while half the time I was hungry?”

“You mean you envied her?”

“Envied, hell!  Didn’t I have a right?  Wasn’t she my twin sister?  Didn’t she have it all, and I nothing?”

He gasped for breath at this sudden revelation.  Then he laughed, convinced it could not be possible.

“Who told you that?”

“Why, don’t you believe it?  Has she never said a word about it to you?”

“Certainly not.  I am sure she possesses no knowledge of ever having had a sister.  Moreover, I do not believe it is true.  If you had proof of such relationship, why didn’t you go to her, and openly claim your share?”

“Go to her! me?  Do you hear that Jim?  Isn’t he the cute little fixer?  Why, of course, she knew it; there was nothing doing on the divide.  It’s all straight enough, only we couldn’t quite prove it by law; anyhow that is what they told me—­so we got at it from another direction.”

She seemed so convinced, so earnest in her statement that West in perplexity turned to glance at Hobart.

“Do you make this claim also?” he asked.

“What claim?”

“That this girl is a twin sister to Natalie Coolidge?  Why, it is preposterous.”

“Is it?  Damned if I think so.  Now look here, West; I don’t know just what the Coolidge girl has been told; maybe she never even heard she had a twin sister.  If they ever told her that she had, then they must have told her also that the sister died in infancy.  Anyhow, that’s how it stands on the records.  There were just two people who knew different—­do you get me?  One of them is dead, but one of them is still alive.”

“Which one is dead?”

“Percival Coolidge; he knew too much and got gay; he planned to cop the whole boodle.  The fact is he started the whole scheme, soon as he learned who Del was, and planned it all out.  He was up against it hard just then for money; he’d lost all his own, and couldn’t get hold of Natalie’s because the old family lawyer watched things so close.”

“But if this girl was really entitled to a part of it, why not claim it by law?”

“We talked about that, but the chance didn’t look good.  Everything showed the second child died; hospital records, doctor’s certificate; there wasn’t a link in the chain we could break.  Percival wouldn’t go on the stand, and there wasn’t much he could swear to if he did.”