Diane of the Green Van

"Yes," said Kronberg faintly.

"What is your real name?"

"Themar."

"When you took service with my aunt in the spring, you were looking for a certain paper?"

"Yes."

"Did you find it during your ten days in the town-house?"

"No."

"How did you discover its whereabouts?"

"One night I watched you replace it in a secret drawer in your room. Before I could obtain it, the house was closed for the summer and I was dismissed. I had succeeded, however, in getting an impression of the desk lock."

"You went back later?"

"Yes. It was a summer day--very hot. The front door was ajar. I opened it wider. Your aunt sat upon the floor of the hall crying--"

"Yes?"

"I spoke of passing and seeing the door ajar. She recognized me as one of the servants and begged me to call a taxi. I assisted her to the taxi and went back, having only pretended to lock the door."

"And having disposed of her," supplied Carl, "you flew up the stairs, applied the key made from the impression--and stole the paper?"

"Yes."

"Beautiful!" said Carl softly. "How cleverly you tricked me!"

Themar shrugged.

"It was very simple."

Carl smiled.

"Where is the paper now?" he inquired.

Themar's face darkened.

"When later I looked in the pocket of my coat," he admitted, "the paper had disappeared utterly. Nor have I found it since. It is a very great mystery--"

"Ah!" said Carl. "So," he mused, "as long as the paper was in my possession, my life was safe, for you must watch me to find it. Therefore I was not poisoned or stabbed or shot at during your original ten days of service. Later, even though you could not lay your own hands upon the paper, things began to happen. Knowing what I did, I had lived too long as it was."

"Yes."

"Suppose you begin at the beginning--and tell me just what you know."

It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told. Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying. By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.

"So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter. Fool! Why," he added curtly, "did you later spy upon my cousin's camp when Tregar had expressly forbidden it?"

It was an unexpected question. Themar flushed uncomfortably. Carl had a way of reading between the lines that was exceedingly disconcerting. His information, he said at length after an interval of marked hesitancy, had been too meager. He had listened at the door once when the Baron had spoken of Miss Westfall to his secretary. A housemaid had frightened him away and he had bolted upstairs--to attend to something else while they were both safely occupied. Rather than work blindly as he needs must if he knew no more, he had sought to add to his information by spying on her camp.