Government investigators -- Fiction; Impostors and imposture -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Romantic suspense fiction
He took out his fountain pen, and, holding the letter on the arm of her
chair, he wrote rapidly in his natural hand her own name and address
beneath the address on the envelope, then held it up to her.
“Do they look alike?”
The two writings were as utterly unlike as possible, the letter being
addressed in an almost unreadable scrawl, and the fresh writing
standing fine and clear, in a script that spoke of character and
business ability. Even a child could see at a glance that the two were
not written by the same hand--and yet of course, it might have been
practised for the purpose of deception. This thought flashed through
the minds of both even as he held it out for her to look.
She looked from the envelope to his eyes and back to the letter,
startled, not knowing what to think.
But before either of them had time for another word the conductor, the
porter, and several people from the car behind came hurriedly through,
and they realized that while they talked the train had come to a halt,
amid the blazing electric lights of a great city station.
“Why,” said Gordon, startled, “we must have reached Pittsburgh. Is this
Pittsburgh?” he called out to the vanishing porter.
“Yas sah!” yelled the porter, putting his head around the curve of the
passageway. “You bettah hurry sah, foh dis train goes on to Cincinnati
pretty quick. We’s late gittin’ in you see.”
Neither of them had noticed a man in rough clothes with slouch hat and
hands in his pockets who had boarded the train a few miles back and
walked through the car several times eyeing them keenly. He stuck his
head in at the door now furtively and drew back quickly again out of
sight.
Gordon hurriedly gathered up the baggage, and they went out of the car,
the porter rushing back as they reached the door, to assist them and
get a last tip. There was no opportunity to say anything more, as they
mingled with the crowd, until the porter landed their baggage in the
great station and hurried back to his train. The man with the slouch
hat followed and stood unobtrusively behind them.
Gordon looked down at the white, drawn face of the girl, and his heart
was touched with compassion for her trouble. He must make her some
satisfactory explanation at once that would set her heart at rest, but
he could not do it here, for every seat about them was filled with
noisy chattering folk. He stooped and whispered low and tenderly:
“Don’t worry, little girl! Just try to trust me, and I will explain it
all.”
“Can you explain it?” she asked anxiously, as if catching at a rope
thrown out to save her life.
“Perfectly,” he said, “if you will be patient and trust me. But we
cannot talk here. Just wait in this seat until I see if I can get the
stateroom on the sleeper.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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