The young American smiled cheerfully down at me.
"Nix on the detective racket here," he said, in his queer, slow, pleasant accent. "You can cut out that about Rats and his ruby, I guess. I don't care a row o' beans where his old ruby has gann to. What I wanted to ask you about was----" He concluded with a most unexpected two words--
I stared up at this big young stranger in the padded grey coat.
"Your cousin? But--I think you're making some mistake----"
"I guess not," said the young American. "You're my cousin's maid all right, aren't you? You're Miss Million's maid?"
"Yes. Yes, of course," I said, clinging on to that one straw of fact in an ocean of unexpectedness. "I'm her maid----"
"And I'm her cousin," said the young American simply. "Second cousin, or second, once removed--or something of that sort. You haven't heard of me?"
"No, I never have heard of any of Miss Million's cousins," I said, shaking my head with a gesture of firm disbelief. For I summed up his claim to relationship with my mistress as being about as authentic as the Honourable Jim's alleged friendship with her uncle.
Only the fibbing of this second young man seemed rather more shameless!
I said: "I didn't know that Miss Million had any cousins."
"And you don't believe it now you hear it? Is that so?" he said, still smiling cheerfully. "Why, it's quite right to be on the side of caution. But you're overdoing it, Miss Smith. I'm related to old man Million right enough. Why, I'm at the boss-end of no end of his business. The Sausage King. Well, I've been the Sausage Prince. I see you looking at me as much as to say, 'You say so.' See here, d'you want some proofs? I've a wad of letters from the old man in my pocket now."
He put his hand to the breast of the grey-tweed jacket.
"Maybe you think those aren't proofs, either? Write myself a few billets-doux signed, 'Yours cordially, Sam Million'--easy as falling off a horse, eh?"
(Of course, this was what I had thought.)
"I guess I shall have to take you and my cousin along with me to our lawyers the next time I'm calling, that's all," concluded the young American with his cheerfully philosophical air. "Chancery Lane, Messrs. Chesterton, Brown, Jones, and Robinson. That's the firm."