“Dick has told you?” he asked.
“All that you told me,” said Dick.
Ransford pulled off his gloves and flung them on the table with something of a gesture of weariness. And at that Mary hastened to speak.
“Don’t tell any more—don’t say anything—until you feel able,” she said. “You’re tired.”
“No!” answered Ransford. “I’d rather say what I have to say now—just now! I’ve wanted to tell both of you what all this was, what it meant, everything about it, and until today, until within the last few hours, it was impossible, because I didn’t know everything. Now I do! I even know more than I did an hour ago. Let me tell you now and have done with it. Sit down there, both of you, and listen.”
He pointed to a sofa near the hearth, and the brother and sister sat down, looking at him wonderingly. Instead of sitting down himself he leaned against the edge of the table, looking down at them.
“I shall have to tell you some sad things,” he said diffidently. “The only consolation is that it’s all over now, and certain matters are, or can be, cleared and you’ll have no more secrets. Nor shall I! I’ve had to keep this one jealously guarded for seventeen years! And I never thought it could be released as it has been, in this miserable and terrible fashion! But that’s done now, and nothing can help it. And now, to make everything plain, just prepare yourselves to hear something that, at first, sounds very trying. The man whom you’ve heard of as John Braden, who came to his death—by accident, as I now firmly believe—there in Paradise, was, in reality, John Brake—your father!”
Ransford looked at his two listeners anxiously as he told this. But he met no sign of undue surprise or emotion. Dick looked down at his toes with a little frown, as if he were trying to puzzle something out; Mary continued to watch Ransford with steady eyes.
“Your father—John Brake,” repeated Ransford, breathing more freely now that he had got the worst news out. “I must go back to the beginning to make things clear to you about him and your mother. He was a close friend of mine when we were young men in London; he a bank manager; I, just beginning my work. We used to spend our holidays together in Leicestershire. There we met your mother, whose name was Mary Bewery. He married her; I was his best man. They went to live in London, and from that time I did not see so much of them, only now and then. During those first years of his married life Brake made the acquaintance of a man who came from the same part of Leicestershire that we had met your mother in—a man named Falkiner Wraye. I may as well tell you that Falkiner Wraye and Stephen Folliot were one and the same person.”
Ransford paused, observing that Mary wished to ask a question.
“How long have you known that?” she asked.
“Not until today,” replied Ransford promptly. “Never had the ghost of a notion of it! If I only had known—but, I hadn’t! However, to go back—this man Wraye, who appears always to have been a perfect master of plausibility, able to twist people round his little finger, somehow got into close touch with your father about financial matters. Wraye was at that time a sort of financial agent in London, engaging in various doings which, I should imagine, were in the nature of gambles. He was assisted in these by a man who was either a partner with him or a very confidential clerk or agent, one Flood, who is identical with the man you have known lately as Fladgate, the verger. Between them, these two appear to have cajoled or persuaded your father at times to do very foolish and injudicious things which were, to put it briefly and plainly, the lendings of various sums of money as short loans for their transactions. For some time they invariably kept their word to him, and the advances were always repaid promptly. But eventually, when they had borrowed from him a considerable sum—some thousands of pounds—for a deal which was to be carried through within a couple of days, they decamped with the money, and completely disappeared, leaving your father to bear the consequences. You may easily understand what followed. The money which Brake had lent them was the bank’s money. The bank unexpectedly came down on him for his balance, the whole thing was found out, and he was prosecuted. He had no defence—he was, of course, technically guilty—and he was sent to penal servitude.”
Ransford had dreaded the telling of this but Mary made no sign, and Dick only rapped out a sharp question.
“He hadn’t meant to rob the bank for himself, anyway, had he?” he asked.
“No, no! not at all!” replied Ransford hastily. “It was a bad error of judgment on his part, Dick, but he—he’d relied on these men, more particularly on Wraye, who’d been the leading spirit. Well, that was your father’s sad fate. Now we come to what happened to your mother and yourselves. Just before your father’s arrest, when he knew that all was lost, and that he was helpless, he sent hurriedly for me and told me everything in your mother’s presence. He begged me to get her and you two children right away at once. She was against it; he insisted. I took you all to a quiet place in the country, where your mother assumed her maiden name. There, within a year, she died. She wasn’t a strong woman at any time. After that—well, you both know pretty well what has been the run of things since you began to know anything. We’ll leave that, it’s nothing to do with the story. I want to go back to your father. I saw him after his conviction. When I had satisfied
