“Then prove it by giving me that paper!” his wife held out her hand.
“Nothing doing, Sweetheart. The formula will be perfectly safe with me.”
He started to put it in an inside pocket, when Laura Lawson sprang for the paper. She grasped his wrist. There was a tussle and the folded sheet fell to the floor. Professor, seated on his haunches and very interested in these exciting proceedings, dove forward and snapped it up. For half a moment he shook the paper as though he took it for a new species of rat. Then as they went for him, he darted between Martin’s legs and scampered out of the room.
“You big goop!” flared his wife. “Why didn’t you pot the cur!”
She rushed out of the room after Professor while Martin stared rather stupidly at the gun in his hand. Suddenly his eyes took on a particularly hard glint and he swung round on Dorothy.
“This,” he rasped, “is the second time you’ve got me in wrong with my wife, Miss Janet Jordan. And there just ain’t going to be no third time, kid!”
“Wha—what are you going to do, Mr. Lawson?” She was still playing the terrified, innocent Janet, but she no longer feared the man. During the Lawsons’ struggle, she had prepared herself for something like this. She had also shifted her position and was standing near the open door, now several yards away.
“You’re going to answer my questions, Janet—and answer them truthfully, or you’ll do your sleepwalking in another world after this.” He menaced her with the automatic, “It’s the bunk, isn’t it? The sleepwalking, I mean.”
“It sure is, Mr. du Val!” drawled Dorothy with a sweet smile.
Lawson was thoroughly surprised and looked it. “Yes—it naturally would be, seeing you know who I really am.”
“Oh, you do, eh? You were awake, of course, at the meeting?”
“I mean that certain people have been making fools of you and your wife, Mr. du Val.”
“I wish,” said Dorothy, “you wouldn’t echo my words. No, I am not—most decidedly, not Janet Jordan, although even you have guessed by this time that I look like her. We changed places on you, big boy! Night before last, just before you came into Janet’s room with her father, Janet was climbing out the window when you knocked the first time. It was rather embarrassing.”
“It’s going to be even more embarrassing for you in a moment or two, Miss Not Janet Jordan! You know too much to live. Who in thunderation are you—a government dick?”