“Is it conceivable,” said she, hesitatingly—­“I only suggest this because the whole thing seems so extraordinary—­that somebody is playing a very foolish joke on you?”

He stared.  “Who on earth would wish to joke with me?”

Of course he had her there.  “I wish,” she said, “that you would tell me what you yourself think of them.”

“I think that my father must be very hard up for something to do.”

“Oh—­I don’t think I should speak of it in that way if I were you.”

“Why not?  If he cites filial duty to me, why shall I not cite paternal duty to him?  Why should he confine his entire relations with me in twenty-four years to two preposterous detective-story letters?”

Sharlee said nothing.  To tell the truth, she thought the behavior of Queed Senior puzzling in the last degree.

“You grasp the situation?  He knows exactly where I am; evidently he has known it all along.  He could come to see me to-night; he could have come as soon as I arrived here three months ago; he could have come five, ten, twenty years ago, when I was in New York.  But instead he elects to write these curious letters, apparently seeking to make a mystery, and throwing the burden of finding him on me.  Why should I become excited over the prospect?  If he would promise to endow me now, to support or pension me off, if I found him, that would be one thing.  But I submit to you that no man can be expected to interrupt a most important life-work in consideration of a single twenty-dollar bill.  And that is the only proof of interest I ever had from him.  No—­” he broke off suddenly—­“no, that’s hardly true after all.  I suppose it was he who sent the money to Tim.”

“To Tim?”

“Tim Queed.”

Presently she gently prodded him.  “And do you want to tell me who Tim Queed is?”

He eyed her thoughtfully.  If the ground of his talk appeared somewhat delicate, nothing could have been more matter-of-fact than the way he tramped it.  Yet now he palpably paused to ask himself whether it was worth his while to go more into detail.  Yes; clearly it was.  If it ever became necessary to ask the boarding-house agent to find his father for him, she would have to know what the situation was, and now was the time to make it plain to her once and for all.

“He is the man I lived with till I was fourteen; one of my friends, a policeman.  For a long time I supposed, of course, that Tim was my father, but when I was ten or twelve, he told me, first that I was an orphan who had been left with him to bring up, and later on, that I had a father somewhere who was not in a position to bring up children.  That was all he would ever say about it.  I became a student while still a little boy, having educated myself practically without instruction of any sort, and when I was fourteen I left Tim because he married at that time, and, with the quarreling and drinking that followed, the house became unbearable.  Tim