“The actress?”

Bassett had an extraordinary feeling of unreality, followed by one of doubt.  Either the fellow was a very good actor, or—­

“Sorry,” Dick said slowly.  “I don’t seem to get it.  I don’t know that ‘G’ is as important as his warning.  That note’s a warning.”

“Yes.  It’s a warning.  And I don’t think you need me to tell you what about.”

“Concerning my uncle, or myself?”

“Are you trying to put it over on me that you don’t know?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Dick said, with a sort of grave patience.

The reporter liked courage when he saw it, and he was compelled to a sort of reluctant admiration.

“You’ve got your courage with you,” he observed.  “How long do you suppose it will be after you set foot on the streets of this town before you’re arrested?  How do you know I won’t send for the police myself?”

“I know damned well you won’t,” Dick said grimly.  “Not before I’m through with you.  You’ve chosen to interest yourself in me.  I suppose you don’t deny the imputation in that letter.  You’ll grant that I have a right to know who and what you are, and just what you are interested in.”

“Right-o,” the reporter said cheerfully, glad to get to grips; and to stop a fencing that was getting nowhere.  “I’m connected with the Times-Republican, in your own fair city.  I was in the theater the night Gregory recognized you.  Verbum sap.”

“This Gregory is the ’G’?”

“Oh, quit it, Clark,” Bassett said, suddenly impatient.  “That letter’s the last proof I needed.  Gregory wrote it after he’d seen David Livingstone.  He wouldn’t have written it if he and the old man hadn’t come to an understanding.  I’ve been to the cabin.  My God, man, I’ve even got the parts of your clothing that wouldn’t burn!  You can thank Maggie Donaldson for that.”

“Donaldson,” Dick repeated.  “That was it.  I couldn’t remember her name.  The woman in the cabin.  Maggie.  And Jack.  Jack Donaldson.”

He got up, and was apparently dizzy, for he caught at the table.

“Look here,” Bassett said, “let me give you a drink.  You look all in.”

But Dick shook his head.

“No, thanks just the same.  I’ll ask you to be plain with me, Bassett.  I am—­I have become engaged to a girl, and—­well, I want the story.  That’s all.”

And, when Bassett only continued to stare at him: 

“I suppose I’ve begun wrong end first.  I forgot about how it must seem to you.  I dropped a block out of my life about ten years ago.  Can’t remember it.  I’m not proud of it, but it’s the fact.  What I’m trying to do now is to fill in the gap.  But I’ve got to, somehow.  I owe it to the girl.”

When Bassett could apparently find nothing to say he went on: 

“You say I may be arrested if I go out on the street.  And you rather more than intimate that a woman named Beverly Carlysle is mixed up in it somehow.  I take it that I knew her.”