www.freeclassicebooks.com

"Put me wise," he said succinctly.

Tommy fell in with this demand in so far as he gave him a guarded version of the

disappearance of Jane Finn, and of the possibility of her having been mixed up

unawares in "some political show." He alluded to Tuppence and himself as

"private inquiry agents" commissioned to find her, and added that they would

therefore be glad of any details Mr. Hersheimmer could give them.

That gentleman nodded approval.

"I guess that's all right. I was just a mite hasty. But London gets my goat! I only

know little old New York. Just trot out your questions and I'll answer."

For the moment this paralysed the Young Adventurers, but Tuppence, recovering

herself, plunged boldly into the breach with a reminiscence culled from detective

fiction.

"When did you last see the dece--your cousin, I mean?"

"Never seen her," responded Mr. Hersheimmer.

"What?" demanded Tommy, astonished.

Hersheimmer turned to him.

"No, sir. As I said before, my father and her mother were brother and sister, just

as you might be"--Tommy did not correct this view of their relationship--"but they

didn't always get on together. And when my aunt made up her mind to marry

Amos Finn, who was a poor school teacher out West, my father was just mad!

Said if he made his pile, as he seemed in a fair way to do, she'd never see a cent

of it. Well, the upshot was that Aunt Jane went out West and we never heard

from her again.

"The old man DID pile it up. He went into oil, and he went into steel, and he

played a bit with railroads, and I can tell you he made Wall Street sit up!" He

paused. "Then he died--last fall--and I got the dollars. Well, would you believe it,

my conscience got busy! Kept knocking me up and saying: What about your Aunt

Jane, way out West? It worried me some. You see, I figured it out that Amos Finn

would never make good. He wasn't the sort. End of it was, I hired a man to hunt

her down. Result, she was dead, and Amos Finn was dead, but they'd left a

daughter--Jane--who'd been torpedoed in the Lusitania on her way to Paris. She

The Secret Adversary