Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/131

 water also had helped to blur the signature so that her "Cynthia Gail" which they made her sign, and which they compared with the name upon the passport, escaped open challenge. Then there were questions.

The man who asked them referred to cards in an index box which, evidently, had come across upon the Ribot; for his inquiries referred largely to questions which had been asked Ruth upon the other side. She, fortunately, had had sense enough to have written down for herself the answers which she had given at New York; she had rehearsed them again and again; so now she did not fail to give similar replies. Then there were other inquiries—sudden, startling ones, which gave her consternation; for they seemed based upon some knowledge of the real Cynthia Gail which Ruth did not have. But she had to answer; so she did so as steadily as possible and as intelligently as she could.

The examiner gazed more keenly at her now; he halted his examination to confer in whispers with an associate; he made careful notation upon a card. A clerk brought in a cablegram, which the examiner carefully read. Had the body of Cynthia Gail been identified in Chicago? Had her family found out the fraud which Ruth had been playing upon them; or had other discovery been made so that the French knew that she was an impostor?

The man looked up from the cablegram.

"You have been in France before?" he challenged.

Ruth had thought of being asked that question. She had told Gerry Hull at Mrs. Corliss' that she had been in France—or at least she had let him suppose so when he said that, of course, she had been in Paris. She did