"You won't mind telling me what circ.u.mstances?" suggested Bryce. "I will keep your confidence, Mr. Gilwaters."

"There is really no secret in it--if it comes to that," answered the old man. "I saw John Brake again just once. In a prison cell!"

"A prison cell!" exclaimed Bryce. "And he--a prisoner?"

"He had just been sentenced to ten years' penal servitude," replied Mr.

Gilwaters. "I had heard the sentence--I was present. I got leave to see him. Ten years' penal servitude!--a terrible punishment. He must have been released long ago--but I never heard more."

Bryce reflected in silence for a moment--reckoning and calculating.

"When was this--the trial?" he asked.

"It was five years after the marriage--seventeen years ago," replied Mr.

Gilwaters.

"And--what had he been doing?" inquired Bryce.

"Stealing the bank's money," answered the old man. "I forget what the technical offence was--embezzlement, or something of that sort. There was not much evidence came out, for it was impossible to offer any defence, and he pleaded guilty. But I gathered from what I heard that something of this sort occurred. Brake was a branch manager. He was, as it were, pounced upon one morning by an inspector, who found that his cash was short by two or three thousand pounds. The bank people seemed to have been unusually strict and even severe--Brake, it was said, had some explanation, but it was swept aside and he was given in charge. And the sentence was as I said just now--a very savage one, I thought.

But there had recently been some bad cases of that sort in the banking world, and I suppose the judge felt that he must make an example. Yes--a most trying affair!--I have a report of the case somewhere, which I cut out of a London newspaper at the time."

Mr. Gilwaters rose and turned to an old desk in the corner of his room, and after some rummaging of papers in a drawer, produced a newspaper-cutting book and traced an insertion in its pages. He handed the book to his visitor.

"There is the account," he said. "You can read it for yourself. You will notice that in what Brake's counsel said on his behalf there are one or two curious and mysterious hints as to what might have been said if it had been of any use or advantage to say it. A strange case!"

Bryce turned eagerly to the faded sc.r.a.p of newspaper.

BANK MANAGER'S DEFALCATION.

At the Central Criminal Court yesterday, John Brake, thirty-three, formerly manager of the Upper Tooting branch of the London & Home Counties Bank, Ltd., pleaded guilty to embezzling certain sums, the property of his employers.

Mr. Walkinshaw, Q.C., addressing the court on behalf of the prisoner, said that while it was impossible for his client to offer any defence, there were circ.u.mstances in the case which, if it had been worth while to put them in evidence, would have shown that the prisoner was a wronged and deceived man. To use a Scriptural phrase, Brake had been wounded in the house of his friend. The man who was really guilty in this affair had cleverly escaped all consequences, nor would it be of the least use to enter into any details respecting him. Not one penny of the money in question had been used by the prisoner for his own purposes. It was doubtless a wrong and improper thing that his client had done, and he had pleaded guilty and would submit to the consequences. But if everything in connection with the case could have been told, if it would have served any useful purpose to tell it, it would have been seen that what the prisoner really was guilty of was a foolish and serious error of judgment.

He himself, concluded the learned counsel, would go so far as to say that, knowing what he did, knowing what had been told him by his client in strict confidence, the prisoner, though technically guilty, was morally innocent.

His Lordship, merely remarking that no excuse of any sort could be offered in a case of this sort, sentenced the prisoner to ten years' penal servitude.

Bryce read this over twice before handing back the book.

"Very strange and mysterious, Mr. Gilwaters," he remarked. "You say that you saw Brake after the case was over. Did you learn anything?"

"Nothing whatever!" answered the old clergyman. "I got permission to see him before he was taken away. He did not seem particularly pleased or disposed to see me. I begged him to tell me what the real truth was. He was, I think, somewhat dazed by the sentence--but he was also sullen and morose. I asked him where his wife and two children--one, a mere infant--were. For I had already been to his private address and had found that Mrs. Brake had sold all the furniture and disappeared--completely. No one--thereabouts, at any rate--knew where she was, or would tell me anything. On my asking this, he refused to answer. I pressed him--he said finally that he was only speaking the truth when he replied that he did not know where his wife was. I said I must find her. He forbade me to make any attempt. Then I begged him to tell me if she was with friends. I remember very well what he replied.--'I'm not going to say one word more to any man living, Mr. Gilwaters,' he answered determinedly. 'I shall be dead to the world--only because I've been a trusting fool!--for ten years or thereabouts, but, when I come back to it, I'll let the world see what revenge means! Go away!' he concluded. 'I won't say one word more.'

And--I left him."

"And--you made no more inquiries?--about the wife?" asked Bryce.

"I did what I could," replied Mr. Gilwaters. "I made some inquiry in the neighbourhood in which they had lived. All I could discover was that Mrs. Brake had disappeared under extraordinarily mysterious circ.u.mstances. There was no trace whatever of her. And I speedily found that things were being said--the usual cruel suspicions, you know."

"Such as--what?" asked Bryce.

"That the amount of the defalcations was much larger than had been allowed to appear," replied Mr. Gilwaters. "That Brake was a very clever rogue who had got the money safely planted somewhere abroad, and that his wife had gone off somewhere--Australia, or Canada, or some other far-off region--to await his release. Of course, I didn't believe one word of all that. But there was the fact--she had vanished! And eventually, I thought of Ransford, as having been Brake's great friend, so I tried to find him. And then I found that he, too, who up to that time had been practising in a London suburb--Streatham--had also disappeared. Just after Brake's arrest, Ransford had suddenly sold his practice and gone--no one knew where, but it was believed--abroad. I couldn't trace him, anyway. And soon after that I had a long illness, and for two or three years was an invalid, and--well, the thing was over and done with, and, as I said just now, I have never heard anything of any of them for all these years. And now!--now you tell me that there is a Mary Bewery who is a ward of a Dr. Mark Ransford at--where did you say?"

"At Wrychester," answered Bryce. "She is a young woman of twenty, and she has a brother, Richard, who is between seventeen and eighteen."

"Without a doubt those are Brake's children!" exclaimed the old man.

"The infant I spoke of was a boy. Bless me!--how extraordinary. How long have they been at Wrychester?"

"Ransford has been in practice there some years--a few years," replied Bryce. "These two young people joined him there definitely two years ago. But from what I have learnt, he has acted as their guardian ever since they were mere children."

"And--their mother?" asked Mr. Gilwaters.

"Said to be dead--long since," answered Bryce. "And their father, too. They know nothing. Ransford won't tell them anything. But, as you say--I've no doubt of it myself now--they must be the children of John Brake."

"And have taken the name of their mother!" remarked the old man.

"Had it given to them," said Bryce. "They don't know that it isn't their real name. Of course, Ransford has given it to them! But now--the mother?"

"Ah, yes, the mother!" said Mr. Gilwaters. "Our old governess! Dear me!"

"I'm going to put a question to you," continued Bryce, leaning nearer and speaking in a low, confidential tone. "You must have seen much of the world, Mr. Gilwaters--men of your profession know the world, and human nature, too. Call to mind all the mysterious circ.u.mstances, the veiled hints, of that trial. Do you think--have you ever thought--that the false friend whom the counsel referred to was--Ransford? Come, now!"

The old clergyman lifted his hands and let them fall on his knees.

"I do not know what to say!" he exclaimed. "To tell you the truth, I have often wondered if--if that was what really did happen. There is the fact that Brake's wife disappeared mysteriously--that Ransford made a similar mysterious disappearance about the same time--that Brake was obviously suffering from intense and bitter hatred when I saw him after the trial--hatred of some person on whom he meant to be revenged--and that his counsel hinted that he had been deceived and betrayed by a friend. Now, to my knowledge, he and Ransford were the closest of friends--in the old days, before Brake married our governess. And I suppose the friendship continued--certainly Ransford acted as best man at the wedding! But how account for that strange double disappearance?"

Bryce had already accounted for that, in his own secret mind. And now, having got all that he wanted out of the old clergyman, he rose to take his leave.

"You will regard this interview as having been of a strictly private nature, Mr. Gilwaters?" he said.

"Certainly!" responded the old man. "But--you mentioned that you wished to marry the daughter? Now that you know about her father's past--for I am sure she must be John Brake's child--you won't allow that to--eh?"

"Not for a moment!" answered Bryce, with a fair show of magnanimity.

"I am not a man of that complexion, sir. No!--I only wished to clear up certain things, you understand."

"And--since she is apparently--from what you say--in ignorance of her real father's past--what then?" asked Mr. Gilwaters anxiously. "Shall you--"

"I shall do nothing whatever in any haste," replied Bryce. "Rely upon me to consider her feelings in everything. As you have been so kind, I will let you know, later, how matters go."

This was one of Pemberton Bryce's ready inventions. He had not the least intention of ever seeing or communicating with the late vicar of Braden Medworth again; Mr. Gilwaters had served his purpose for the time being.

He went away from Bayswater, and, an hour later, from London, highly satisfied. In his opinion, Mark Ransford, seventeen years before, had taken advantage of his friend's misfortunes to run away with his wife, and when Brake, alias Braden, had unexpectedly turned up at Wrychester, he had added to his former wrong by the commission of a far greater one.

CHAPTER X. DIPLOMACY

Bryce went back to Wrychester firmly convinced that Mark Ransford had killed John Braden. He reckoned things up in his own fashion. Some years must have elapsed since Braden, or rather Brake's release. He had probably heard, on his release, that Ransford and his, Brake's, wife had gone abroad--in that case he would certainly follow them. He might have lost all trace of them; he might have lost his original interest in his first schemes of revenge; he might have begun a new life for himself in Australia, whence he had undoubtedly come to England recently. But he had come, at last, and he had evidently tracked Ransford to Wrychester--why, otherwise, had he presented himself at Ransford's door on that eventful morning which was to witness his death? Nothing, in Bryce's opinion, could be clearer. Brake had turned up. He and Ransford had met--most likely in the precincts of the Cathedral. Ransford, who knew all the quiet corners of the old place, had in all probability induced Brake to walk up into the gallery with him, had noticed the open doorway, had thrown Brake through it. All the facts pointed to that conclusion--it was a theory which, so far as Bryce could see, was perfect. It ought to be enough--proved--to put Ransford in a criminal dock. Bryce resolved it in his own mind over and over again as he sped home to Wrychester--he pictured the police listening greedily to all that he could tell them if he liked. There was only one factor in the whole sum of the affair which seemed against him--the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Times. If Brake desired to find Ransford in order to be revenged on him, why did he insert that advertis.e.m.e.nt, as if he were longing to meet a cherished friend again? But Bryce gaily surmounted that obstacle--full of shifts and subtleties himself, he was ever ready to credit others with trading in them, and he put the advertis.e.m.e.nt down as a clever ruse to attract, not Ransford, but some person who could give information about Ransford. Whatever its exact meaning might have been, its existence made no difference to Bryce's firm opinion that it was Mark Ransford who flung John Brake down St. Wrytha's Stair and killed him. He was as sure of that as he was certain that Braden was Brake. And he was not going to tell the police of his discoveries--he was not going to tell anybody. The one thing that concerned him was--how best to make use of his knowledge with a view to bringing about a marriage between himself and Mark Ransford's ward. He had set his mind on that for twelve months past, and he was not a man to be baulked of his purpose. By fair means, or foul--he himself ignored the last word and would have subst.i.tuted the term skilful for it--Pemberton Bryce meant to have Mary Bewery.