Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/323

“Well, that’s the one. I mean, I’m that one,” he said. with a slight choke. “It sounds like an obvious fraud, I know, but I’m not worrying because there are plenty of people in Sydney who can identify me. But, as I said, we have not any money, and my—the lady I am going to marry has some jewellery, and I wondered whether I might leave something with you as security, if you’d lend me the worth of it. I don’t want to sell it, and a pawnbroker wouldn’t give me the value, or else he’d make trouble because of thinking I’d stolen it.”

“I’d like to see the jewellery.”

“You’d have it valued by a jeweller before you did anything, of course. It’d be awfully good of you—sir.”

Attwood’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing for a moment. Then he looked up keenly.

“How was it you didn’t die in the desert, and why in Heaven’s name did you stay here under a false one?”

“Well, you see, I never meant to die at all, it was a put-up job, if you can have a put-up job single-handed. I just walked through and dropped my identity in the desert.”

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, that doesn’t make it any clearer.”

“No; but it’s not easy to explain. I wasn’t brought up to be Trent, and they only found out I was by accident, and so I turned out the other heir—heiress—it’s a girl. Well, I hated the life and she wouldn’t go back while I was about, so I had to disappear———”

“And why this sudden reappearance?”

Tony drew a long breath. “Because it didn’t work, after all. She was so far from home that she didn’t get the news, and she came here—and it’s she I’m going to marry.”

He looked at Attwood defiantly, daring him to laugh. Attwood carefully placed his cooling pipe on the arm of the cane lounge and gazed at him speechlessly. Then they both laughed a little, but Tony soon pulled up.