“I was in the living-room when Donaldson ran in.  I hid there until they were all gathered around Lucas and had quit running in, and then I got away.  I saw my mother in the grounds later.  I told her where the revolver was and that they’d better put it in the billiard room.  I was afraid they’d suspect Bev.

“I have read the above statement and it is correct.  I was legally adopted by Mrs. Alice Ford Hines, of Omaha, and use that signature.  I generally use the name of Frederick Gregory, which I took when I was on the stage for a short time.

“(Signed) Clifton Hines.”

Bassett folded up the papers and put them in the envelope.  “I got that,” he said, “at the point of a gun, my friend.  And our friend Hines departed for the Mexican border on the evening train.  I don’t mind saying that I saw him off.  He held out for a get-away, and I guess it’s just as well.”

He glanced at Dick, lying still and rigid on the bed.

“And now,” he said.  “I think a little drink won’t do us any harm.”

Dick refused to drink.  He was endeavoring to comprehend the situation; to realize that Gregory, who had faced him with such sneering hate a day or so before, was his half-brother.

“Poor devil!” he said at last.  “I wish to God I’d known.  He was right, you know.  No wonder—­”

Sometime later he roused from deep study and looked at Bassett.

“How did you get the connection?”

“I saw Melis, and learned that Hines was in it somehow.  He was the connecting link between Beverly Carlysle and the Thorwald woman.  But I couldn’t connect him with Beverly herself, except by a chance.  I wired a man I knew in Omaha, and he turned up the second marriage, and a daughter known on the stage as Beverly Carlysle.”

Bassett was in high spirits.  He moved about the room immensely pleased with himself, slightly boastful.

“Some little stroke, Dick!” he said.  “What price Mr. Judson Clark to-night, eh?  It will be worth a million dollars to see Wilkins’ face when he reads that thing.”

“There’s no mention of me as Livingstone in it, is there?”

“It wasn’t necessary to go into that.  I didn’t know—­ Look here,” he exploded, “you’re not going to be a damned fool, are you?”

“I’m not going to revive Judson Clark, Bassett.  I don’t owe him anything.  Let him die a decent death and stay dead.”

“Oh, piffle!” Bassett groaned.  “Don’t start that all over again.  Don’t pull any Enoch Arden stuff on me, looking in at a lighted window and wandering off to drive a taxicab.”

Suddenly Dick laughed.  Bassett watched him, puzzled and angry, with a sort of savage tenderness.

“You’re crazy,” he said morosely.  “Darned if I understand you.  Here I’ve got everything fixed as slick as a whistle, and it took work, believe me.  And now you say you’re going to chuck the whole thing.”