“I suppose,” he said at last, “that if I ran away I was in pretty serious trouble.  What was it?”

“We’ve got no absolute proof that you are Clark, remember.  You don’t know, and Maggie Donaldson was considered not quite sane before she died.  I’ve told you there’s a chance you are the other man.”

“All right.  What had Clark done?”

“He had shot a man.”

The reporter was instantly alarmed.  If Dick had been haggard before, he was ghastly now.  He got up slowly and held to the back of his chair.

“Not—­murder?” he asked, with stiff lips.

“No,” Bassett said quickly.  “Not at all.  See here, you’ve had about all you can stand.  Remember, we don’t even know you are Clark.  All I said was—­”

“I understand that.  It was murder, wasn’t it?”

“Well, there had been a quarrel, I understand.  The law allows for that, I think.”

Dick went slowly to the window, and stood with his back to Bassett.  For a long time the room was quiet.  In the street below long lines of cars in front of the hotel denoted the luncheon hour.  An Indian woman with a child in the shawl on her back stopped in the street, looked up at Dick and extended a beaded belt.  With it still extended she continued to stare at his white face.

“The man died, of course?” he asked at last, without turning.

“Yes.  I knew him.  He wasn’t any great loss.  It was at the Clark ranch.  I don’t believe a conviction would be possible, although they would try for one.  It was circumstantial evidence.”

“And I ran away?”

“Clark ran away,” Bassett corrected him.  “As I’ve told you, the authorities here believe he is dead.”

After an even longer silence Dick turned.

“I told you there was a girl.  I’d like to think out some way to keep the thing from her, before I surrender myself.  If I can protect her, and David—­”

“I tell you, you don’t even know you are Clark.”

“All right.  If I’m not, they’ll know.  If I am—­I tell you I’m not going through the rest of my life with a thing like that hanging over me.  Maggie Donaldson was sane enough.  Why, when I look back, I know our leaving the cabin was a flight.  I’m not Henry Livingstone’s son, because he never had a son.  I can tell you what the Clark ranch house looks like.”  And after a pause:  “Can you imagine the reverse of a dream when you’ve dreamed you are guilty of something and wake up to find you are innocent?  Who was the man?”

Bassett watched him narrowly.

“His name was Lucas.  Howard Lucas.”

“All right.  Now we have that, where does Beverly Carlysle come in?”

“Clark was infatuated with her.  The man he shot was the man she had married.”

XXV

Shortly after that Dick said he would go to his room.  He was still pale, but his eyes looked bright and feverish, and Bassett went with him, uneasily conscious that something was not quite right.  Dick spoke only once on the way.