"Now tell me about Henry Wilton--how he died and when."
Again the vision of my first dreadful night in San Francisco rose before me, the cries for help from my murdered friend rang in my ears, and the scene in the alley and the figure in the morgue burned before my eyes.
I told the tale as it had happened, and as I told it I read in the face before me the varying emotions of alarm, horror and grief that were stirred by its incidents.
But one thing I could not tell her. The wolf-face I had seen in the lantern flash in the alley I could not name nor describe to the wife of Doddridge Knapp. Yet at the thought the dark mystery grew darker, yet, and I began to doubt what my eyes had seen, and my ears had heard.
Mrs. Knapp bowed her head in deep, gloomy thought.
"I feared it, yet he would not listen to my warnings," she murmured. "He would work his own way." Then she looked me suddenly straight in the face.
"And why did you take his place, his name? Why did you try to do his work when you had seen the dreadful end to which it had brought him?"
I confessed that it was half through the insistence of Detective Coogan that I was Henry Wilton, half through the course of events that seemed to make it the easiest road to reach the vengeance that I had vowed to bring the murderer of my friend.
"You are bent on avenging him?" asked Mrs. Knapp thoughtfully.
"You shall have the chance. Strange thought!" she said gloomily, "that the dead hand of Henry Wilton may reach out from beyond the grave and strike at his slayer when he least expects it."
I was more than ever mystified at these words. I had not expected her to take so philosophically to the idea of hanging Doddridge Knapp, and I thought it best to hold my tongue.
"I have marveled at you," said Mrs. Knapp after a pause. "I marvel at you yet. You have carried off your part well."
"Not well enough, it seems, to deceive you," I said, a little bitterly.
"You should not have expected to deceive me," said Mrs. Knapp. "But you can imagine the shock I had when I saw that it was not Henry Wilton who had come among us that first night when I called you from Mr. Knapp's room."
"You certainly succeeded in concealing any surprise you may have felt," I said. "You are a better actor than I."