ginally belonged to the East, Mr. Logotheti, didn't you?' he
asked suddenly.

'Yes. I'm a Greek and a Turkish subject.'

'Do you happen to know the Patriarch of Constantinople?'

Logotheti stared in surprise, taken off his guard for once.

'Very well indeed,' he answered after an instant. 'He is my uncle.'

'Why, now, that's quite interesting!' observed Mr. Van Torp, rising
deliberately and thrusting his hands into his pockets.

Logotheti, who knew nothing about the details of Lady Maud's pending
divorce, could not imagine what the American was driving at, and
waited for more. Mr. Van Torp began to walk up and down, with his
rather clumsy gait, digging his heels into vivid depths of the new
Smyrna carpet at every step.

'I wasn't going to tell you,' he said at last, 'but I may just as
well. Most of the accusations in that letter are lies. I didn't blow
up the subway. I know it was done on purpose, of course, but I had
nothing to do with it, and any man who says I had, takes me for a
fool, which you'll probably allow I'm not. You're a man of business,
Mr. Logotheti. There had been a fall in Nickel, and for weeks before
the explosion I'd been making a considerable personal sacrifice to
steady things. Now you know as well as I do that all big accidents
are bad for the market when it's shaky. Do you suppose I'd have
deliberately produced one just then? Besides, I'm not a criminal. I
didn't blow up the subway any more than I blew up the Maine to bring
on the Cuban war! The man's a fool.'

'I quite agree with you,' said the Greek, listening with interest.

'Then there's another thing. That about poor Mrs. Moon, who's gone
out of her mind. It's nonsense to say I was the reason of Bamberger's
divorcing his wife. In the first place, there are the records of the
divorce, and my name was never mentioned. I was her friend, that's
all, and Bamberger resented it--he's a resentful sort of man anyway.
He thought she'd marry me as soon as he got the divorce. Well, she
didn't. She married old Alvah Moon, who was the only man she ever
cared for. The Lord knows how it was, but that wicked old scarecrow
made all the women love him, to his dying day. I had a high regard for
Mrs. Bamberger, and I suppose she was right to marry him if she liked
him. Well, she married him in too much of a hurry, and the child that
was born abroad was Bamberger's and not his, and when he found it out
he sent the girl East and would never see her again,