Page:Bedford-Jones--The Mardi Gras Mystery.djvu/313

 Fell smiled. "Ah! Then you are in love. Well, youth must be served!"

"I'd like to know one thing," struck in Gramont. "That is, why you were so cursed anxious to get something on my man Hammond! And why you held the Midnight Masquer affair over me as a threat. Did you suspect my business?"

Fell threw back his head and laughed in a hearty amusement that was quite unrestrained.

"That," he responded, "is really humorous! Do you know, I honestly thought you a fortune-hunter from Europe? When I suspected you of being the Midnight Masquer, and afterward, I was convinced that you, and very likely Hammond as well, were very clever swindlers of some kind. There, I confess, I made a grave error. My friend Gumberts never forgets faces, and he said to me, one day, that Hammond's face was vaguely familiar to him, but he could not place the man. That led me to think"

"Ah!" exclaimed Gramont. "Gumberts saw Hammond years ago, when he was escaping from the law—and to think he remembered! Hammond told me about it."