“Yes, Captain Hugh Treherne,” assented Ducie. “He was known to have been severely wounded toward the end of the war, and as he could never afterward be located it is supposed he died of his injuries. Every effort to find him was made to secure his testimony in the action for the foreclosure of the mortgage.”
“But he was not dead,” said Paula, unexpectedly. “‘Captain Treherne,’ that’s the very name.”
“Why, Paula,” exclaimed Floyd-Rosney, astounded. “What do you mean? You know absolutely nothing of the matter.”
“The robbers spoke of him,” she said, confusedly. “I overheard them.” Then with more assurance: “They derived their information from him as to the hiding-place. That’s how I found it out. Not that he disclosed it intentionally. They spoke as if--as if he were not altogether sane. They said that he could not remember. But in his sleep he talked ‘as straight as a string.’”
“Oh, stuff and nonsense! You heard no such thing!” exclaimed Floyd-Rosney. “You are as crazy as he can possibly be.”
The ridicule stimulated self-justification, even while it abashed her, for every eye was fixed upon her. Colonel Kenwynton looked at once eager, anxious, yet wincing, as one who shrinks from a knife.
“They did not understand the meaning of his sleeping words,” Paula persisted. “He spoke of pillar and base and pilaster and capital----”
“Oh, oh,” exclaimed Floyd-Rosney, in derision.
Paula had the concentrated look of seeking to shake off this embarrassment of her mental progress and to keep straight upon a definite trend. “They spoke, indeed, as if they had Captain Treherne in reach somewhere,--I wish I had remembered to mention this earlier,--as if he were to be forced to further disclosures if they should fail to find the treasure.”
“Oh, this is too preposterous,” cried Floyd-Rosney, rising. He threw away the stump of his cigar into the old and broken fireplace. “I must beg of you, Paula, for my credit if not your own, to desist from making a spectacle of yourself.”
Colonel Kenwynton lifted a wrinkled and trembling hand in protest. “I ask your pardon; Mrs. Floyd-Rosney will do no one discredit. I must hear what she has to say of this. The gentleman is my dear, dear friend. I had lost sight of him for years.” Then turning toward Paula: “Did I understand you to say, madam, that they spoke as if he were in their power?”