"Have you seen any woman here?"
"No," responded the wood-cutter. "We never see any woman out in these
woods."
The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make
certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked,
"Who are you?"
"That is my own affair," I answered.
The mystery of Elma's disappearance while we had slept annoyed me. She
seemed to have fled from me in secret. Yet could she have received some
warning that the police were in search of her? She was deaf, therefore
she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.
"Your identity is my affair," declared the man with the fair, bristly
beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.
"Who is your chief?" I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.
"Melnikoff, at Helsingfors."
"Then this is not in the district of Abo?"
"No. But what difference does it make? Who are you?"
"Gordon Gregg, British subject," I replied.
"And you are the drosky-driver from Abo," remarked the fellow, turning
to Felix.
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