“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Czar.”

“I bet you wouldn’t. Everybody knows me, knows where I came from, and my father’s name and my mother’s, and their fathers’ and mothers’ names, like any decent American family. Time I’m through, I’ll bet I’ll find out Christine has got a double taint on her, father and grandfather.”

Addlepated though she might seem at times, Bridie Ballantyne, in a crisis, represented pure reasoning. “That case, I’d think you’d be better off, and Chris too, letting it lay. Unless you want to make a martyr out of her. Spite, if I ever saw it, Czar Kennedy. Pure mean spite. Spreading things around people shouldn’t know, and none of their business. If I was to spread around what I know about Baranof folks the town would look like a cops-and-robbers movie. And that includes you, Czar Kennedy. Maybe people know who you are, but do they know what you are? I do. And Thor does.”

Thor smiled down on her, his pink face radiating pleased surprise. “What have you been reading, Bridie?”

“You know I don’t get time to read. I’ve just been listening to you for years and years, and Chris ever since she was old enough to make sense out of what you’ve told her.”

Czar got to his feet then, he pointed a finger, his arm outstretched, like an accuser in an old-fashioned melodrama. “That’s it! He’s poisoned the child with his crazy talk. Anti-American through and through.”

“Know what I think?” Bridie demanded, crisply. “I think you ain’t well, Czar. Putting it politely, that is.”

He stared at Bridie with a cold and baleful eye. “Keep out of this. You’ve got nothing to do with this. This is between Thor and me.”

“That’s right,” Bridie agreed, with awful affability. “I only brought the child up and kept her alive when—–”

“Let’s go now, Bridie,” Thor suggested, quietly.

“Running out, eh? Scared.” Czar sat down now, he seemed suddenly relaxed as though his suspicions were at last justified. “I’m just doing this to protect Christine.”

“Not for your own satisfaction?” Thor’s tone was quizzical, but the blue eyes were serious.

“You must have taken me for a poor fool all this time. Why, years ago, when we first got here, they’d take pictures of the crowd of us somewhere, one of the boys had struck it rich, maybe, or there was a jamboree of some kind, citizens of Baranof and so on. You always slunk away before the camera snapped. No man hides out unless he’s got a good reason for not wanting his face where it can be seen and traced.”

“And let me tell you,” Thor remarked, cheerfully, “slunking and hiding is a difficult feat for a man who is six feet four.”

Bridie tactlessly and involuntarily giggled at this. A grayish film seemed to come down over Czar Kennedy’s eyes.

“I’ll get detectives. Private detectives. They’ll trace you right back if it takes years.”

The ruddy giant shook his head sadly. “I wish I could make you understand why you want to destroy me. I know. Your hatred is understandable to me.”