Part 38 (1/2)
The latter winced and went on hurriedly:
”The night before I left I was sitting at the window of an unlighted room, thinking--G.o.d knows what I was thinking, it doesn't matter now--when I heard voices in the shrubbery and recognised them as belonging to my brother and his German valet. Hearing my own name, I leant out of the window and listened; I felt no shame about it, for I guessed the part George had played in my affairs. And, anyway, I wasn't caring much about the conventions just then. There's no need to repeat what I heard, but my suspicions were confirmed, and when the pair moved out of the shrubbery I knew for certain that, between them, they had engineered my ruin. To put the matter in a nutsh.e.l.l, my brother had forged the cheque, having previously arranged matters so that suspicion should fall on me.
”My first thought was to rush to the old man at once and tell him what I had discovered. But a moment's reflection convinced me that I hadn't an atom of tangible proof, that the whole thing would rest on my word, which, under the circ.u.mstances, I could hardly expect anyone to accept.
No, there was nothing for it but to acquiesce in the inevitable and go--which I did.”
”Yes,” said Vayne thoughtfully, ”you came up to my office one morning early. There was a look in your face that I shan't forget as long as I live. It has often puzzled me since why you came to me.”
”I don't quite know, myself,” answered Calamity. ”But you had always been pretty decent to me, Vayne, and when I was acting the fool at Oxford, you befriended me more than once. Why a staid and eminently respectable family lawyer like yourself should lend a helping hand to a scatter-brained idiot I don't know; but you did, and there it is.”
”As to that, my dear John, your family have been clients of my firm for generations,” said the lawyer almost apologetically.
Calamity laughed.
”I'm afraid that's a very weak defence, Vayne, not to say irrelevant.
However, we'll let it pa.s.s. You lent me the money to get out of the country and--well, you know the rest.”
”I know as much as you told me in one scanty letter a year,” answered the lawyer drily. ”I don't believe you would even have written me to that extent had I not extracted the promise from you before you left my office.”
”I'm afraid you wouldn't have been very edified had I given you a full and particular account of my adventures. I served three years before the mast, got my mate's ticket, and after that a master's ticket. I've sailed in whalers, colliers, cattle-boats, liners, tramps, blackbirders, and G.o.d knows what sort of craft. I've dug for gold in Alaska, been a transport rider in South Africa, skippered a pearling-ground poacher in j.a.panese waters, run guns in the Persian Gulf, and--well, ended up by becoming a privateer. Also, I nearly pegged out once with malaria, and, as you see, I lost an eye.”
The lawyer nodded.
”Your father, as I informed you in one of my yearly letters, died in the belief that you were dead, and so did your brother,” he said. ”Seeing that they are both gone, I suggest that you do not attempt to reopen the matter of the forged cheque. As you have said, you can prove nothing, and----”
”But I can now,” interrupted Calamity, with almost savage energy. ”Look at this.”
He took a wallet out of his pocket and extracted from it the doc.u.ment that Fritz Siemann had drawn up and signed and which Smith and McPhulach had witnessed.
”There,” he said, handing it to the lawyer.
The latter took the doc.u.ment, adjusted his pinc-nez, and carefully read it through twice.
”That clears you once and for all,” he remarked as he handed it back.
”It does, and I'm going to use it.”
”My dear fellow!” exclaimed the lawyer in a tone almost approaching horror.
”Oh, I don't mean that I propose publis.h.i.+ng it in the newspapers. But all those who knew me and believed in my guilt at the time shall see it.”
”But whatever wrong your brother may have done you, he is dead now, and it would hardly be--er--good form to dishonour his memory. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum._”
”d.a.m.n his memory!” flashed out Calamity. ”I beg your pardon, Vayne,” he went on in a quieter tone, noticing the other's shocked expression, ”but I don't see why a live man should suffer in order to s.h.i.+eld a dead man's reputation. He made me suffer while I was alive, and it is a very poor revenge, albeit the only one at my disposal, to charge him with his crime now he's dead. I for one won't bow down to the s.h.i.+bboleth of honouring the dead just because they are dead; I hate my brother as much now as ever I did, and the mere fact that he's no longer able to enjoy the fruits of his rascality makes no difference to that.”
”As you will, John; it's a matter for you to decide, not me.”
The lawyer rose from his chair and slowly fastened his little leather bag.