Snarled Identities; Or, A Desperate TangleCarter, Nicholas (House name)
General
Snarled Identities; Or, A Desperate Tangle
Carter, Nicholas (House name)
Detective and mystery stories; Dime novels; Popular literature
Less than that time had been required for the trip, and now the
millionaire stepped out of the car and approached the house, looking
about him rather critically as he did so.
He had not always been wealthy, and he knew that No. 31 Floral Avenue,
though insignificant enough from his present standpoint, was not the
sort of place that a man dependent on the salary of the size of John
Simpson’s was able to afford. Accordingly, therefore, he came to the
same conclusion that Jack Cray had reached the previous day.
“By Heaven!” he muttered, the skin under his jaws tightening. “The
fellow must have been helping himself from the fund before he decamped.
What a fool he is! What fools they always are to make a big showing on
nothing. Don’t they know what a telltale performance it is?” Then he
smiled a little grimly and shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose, though,
it’s natural that they should want to find some outlet for the money
they’ve sold their souls for,” he added mentally, as he pressed the
button of the electric bell.
The maid presently opened the door, and Griswold gave his name. He
was ushered into the same room in which Cray had been conducted less
than twenty-four hours before, and in hardly more than a minute Mrs.
Simpson joined him.
Griswold looked at her with a touch of curiosity, for to him the
members of his staff had always been little more than the cogs in the
great machine that he drove, and it was rather hard for him to think of
them in any intimately human relationship.
As soon as their first formal greetings were over, he came to the point
at once.
“I’m very much interested—after a fashion—in this man Jones, Mrs.
Simpson. Are you sure you made no mistake in the name?”
“Quite, Mr. Griswold,” the missing treasurer’s wife replied positively.
“That’s certainly the name he gave me yesterday. He said you had sent
him, too. He asked me all sorts of questions about Mr. Simpson and
the house and myself—very strange questions, some of them. He even
requested me to show him about the place. I do hope——”
Lane Griswold held up one carefully manicured hand.
“It’s all right, I think, Mrs. Simpson,” he hastened to assure her.
“If he’s the man I think he is, he was quite justified in saying I
sent him. Apparently, however, he didn’t choose to give his own name,
which seems to have been a rather useless and unlooked-for performance.
Describe him, please.”
The woman did so, and Griswold nodded once or twice during the
description.
“That’s the man,” he admitted. “The name has caused some confusion,
however, and the rest was due to the fact that he isn’t regularly
employed at the office, but works for me personally.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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