'You told me you were Wyoming Ed!'
He laughed uneasily.
'Well, in a manner of speaking, so I have been for the last five
years, but I wasn't Wyoming Ed before that. Say, old man, are you
acting for Colonel Jim Baxter?'
Sanderson, on whom a dozen years seemed to have fallen since we
entered the room, appeared unable to speak, and merely shook his head
in a hopeless sort of way.
'I say, boys,' ejaculated the ex-convict, with an uneasy laugh,
half-comic, half-bewildered, 'this is a sort of mix-up, isn't it? I
wish Colonel Jim was here to explain. I say, Boss,' he cried suddenly,
turning sharp on me, 'this here misfit's not my fault. I didn't change
the children in the cradle. You don't intend to send me back to that
hell-hole, do you?'
'No,' I said, 'not if you tell the truth. Sit down.'
The late prisoner seated himself in a chair as close to the door as
possible, hitching a little nearer as he sat down. His face had taken
on a sharp, crafty aspect like that of a trapped rat.
'You are perfectly safe,' I assured him. 'Sit over here by the table.
Even if you bolted through that door, you couldn't get out of this
flat. Mr. Sanderson, take a chair.'
The old man sank despondently into the one nearest at hand. I pressed
a button, and when my servant entered, I said to him:--
'Bring some Cognac and Scotch whisky, glasses, and two syphons of
soda.'
'You haven't got any Kentucky or Canadian?' asked the prisoner,
moistening his lips. The jail whiteness in his face was now
accentuated by the pallor of fear, and the haunted look of the escaped
convict glimmered from his eyes. In spite of the comfort I had
attempted to bestow upon him, he knew that he had been rescued in
mistake for another, and for the first time since he left prison
realised he was among strangers, and not among friends. In his trouble
he turned to the beverage of his native continent.
'Bring a bottle of Canadian whisky,' I said to the servant, who
disappeared, and shortly returned with what I had ordered. I locked
the door after him, and put the key in my pocket.
'What am I to call you?' I asked the ex-convict.