"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have
it all definitely settled at last."
"If I could only feel that it was!"
I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her
hands still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the
distant horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous
breathing flamed and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if
timed to the throbbing of that distant flare. "I want you to take me
to that island--to-morrow."
"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may
have embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but
Farquharson's books and things--the material evidence of his having
lived there--"
"And having died there?"
"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked
with him--"
"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."
"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in
a sudden flash I understood. "But that's pre-posterous--impossible!"
I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a role, tried to
imagine the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling
Major Stanleigh and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all
that ingenious detail to trick us into a belief in his own death.
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