I will ask you to excuse me, and bid you a very good-day.”
Barham turned back to his desk and took up his pen.
“But, sir—” the man began, “won’t you please”
Barham turned back and looked at him. “I said good-day,” he reminded him, and with his penhandle, he pointed toward the door.
The man departed, and strange to say was never heard of again by Barham or the police either.
“Good game—but it didn’t work,” Andrew Barham advised himself.
Nick Nelson came in later.
“I’ve been trying to find that brother of Locke’s,” he said, “I thought I might get a line on the artist through him.
Barham laughed, the first time Nick had seen him laugh since the tragedy.
“You’ll probably never see him again,” he said, and then he related the incident as it happened.
“Why were you so sure he was an impostor?” Nelson asked.
“Oh, he had all the earmarks of the professional vulture. They run around to find people who die or disappear without relatives, and then they try to claim the property. Sometimes they get away with it, and sometimes they don’t.”
“What did you tell him all those other names for? Did you make them up?”
“Of course. I did it to prove myself right. If he had been Locke’s brother, don’t you suppose he would have insisted on his own genealogy? He made up his ancestors’ names, so I had an equal right to make up another set for the missing man.”
