When Bryce had left her, Mary Bewery had gone into the house to await
Ransford's return from town. She meant to tell him of all that Bryce had
said and to beg him to take immediate steps to set matters right, not
only that he himself might be cleared of suspicion but that Bryce's
intrigues might be brought to an end. She had some hope that Ransford
would bring back satisfactory news; she knew that his hurried visit to
London had some connection with these affairs; and she also remembered
what he had said on the previous night. And so, controlling her anger at
Bryce and her impatience of the whole situation she waited as patiently
as she could until the time drew near when Ransford might be expected to
be seen coming across the Close. She knew from which direction he would
come, and she remained near the dining-room window looking out for him.
But six o'clock came and she had seen no sign of him; then, as she was
beginning to think that he had missed the afternoon train she saw
him, at the opposite side of the Close, talking earnestly to Dick,
who presently came towards the house while Ransford turned back into
Folliot's garden.
Dick Bewery came hurriedly in. His sister saw at once that he had just
heard news which had had a sobering effect on his usually effervescent
spirits. He looked at her as if he wondered exactly how to give her his
message.
“I saw you with the doctor just now,” she said, using the term by which
she and her brother always spoke of their guardian. “Why hasn't he come
home?”
Dick came close to her, touching her arm.
“I say!” he said, almost whispering. “Don't be frightened--the doctor's
all right--but there's something awful just happened. At Folliot's.”
“What” she demanded. “Speak out, Dick! I'm not frightened. What is it?”
Dick shook his head as if he still scarcely realized the full
significance of his news.
“It's all a licker to me yet!” he answered. “I don't understand it--I
only know what the doctor told me--to come and tell you. Look here, it's
pretty bad. Folliot and Bryce are both dead!”
In spite of herself Mary started back as from a great shock and clutched
at the table by which they were standing.
“Dead!” she exclaimed. “Why--Bryce was here, speaking to me, not an hour
ago!”
“Maybe,” said Dick. “But he's dead now. The fact is, Folliot shot him
with a revolver--killed him on the spot. And then Folliot poisoned
himself--took the same stuff, the doctor said, that finished that chap
Collishaw, and died instantly. It was in Folliot's old well-house. The
doctor was there and the police.”
“What does it all mean?” asked Mary.
“Don't know. Except this,” added Dick; “they've found out about those
other affairs--the Braden and the Collishaw affairs. Folliot was
concerned in them; and who do you think the other was? You'd never
guess! That man Fladgate, the verger. Only that isn't his proper name
at all. He and Folliot finished Braden and Collishaw, anyway. The police
have got Fladgate, and Folliot shot Bryce and killed himself just when
they were going to take him.”
“The doctor told you all this?” asked Mary.
“Yes,” replied Dick. “Just that and no more. He called me in as I was
passing Folliot's door. He's coming over as soon as he can. Whew! I say,
won't there be some fine talk in the town! Anyway, things'll be cleared
up now. What did Bryce want here?”
“Never mind; I can't talk of it, now,” answered Mary. She was already
thinking of how Bryce had stood before her, active and alive, only an
hour earlier; she was thinking, too, of her warning to him. “It's all
too dreadful! too awful to understand!”
“Here's the doctor coming now,” said Dick, turning to the window. “He'll
tell more.”
Mary looked anxiously at Ransford as he came hastening in. He looked
like a man who has just gone through a crisis and yet she was somehow
conscious that there was a certain atmosphere of relief about him, as
though some great weight had suddenly been lifted. He closed the door
and looked straight at her.
“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 him that you and your
mother were safe, he begged me to do my best to find the two men who had
ruined him. I began that search at once. But there was not a trace of
them--they had disappeared as completely as if they were dead. I used
all sorts of means to trace them--without effect. And when at last your
father's term of imprisonment was over and I went to see him on his
release, I had to tell him that up to that point all my efforts had been
useless. I urged him to let the thing drop, and to start life afresh.
But he was determined. Find both men, but particularly Wraye, he would!
He refused point-blank to even see his children until he had found these
men and had forced them to acknowledge their misdeeds as regards him,
for that, of course, would have cleared him to a certain extent. And in
spite of everything I could say, he there and then went off abroad in
search of them--he had got some clue, faint and indefinite, but still
there, as to Wraye's presence in America, and he went after him. From
that time until the morning of his death here in Wrychester I never saw
him again!”
“You did see him that morning?” asked Mary.
“I saw him, of course, unexpectedly,” answered Ransford. “I had been
across the Close--I came back through the south aisle of the Cathedral.
Just before I left the west porch I saw Brake going up the stairs to
the galleries. I knew him at once. He did not see me, and I hurried home
much upset. Unfortunately, I think, Bryce came in upon me in that state
of agitation. I have reason to believe that he began to suspect and to
plot from that moment. And immediately on hearing of Brake's death, and
its circumstances, I was placed in a terrible dilemma. For I had made up
my mind never to tell you two of your father's history until I had been
able to trace these two men and wring out of them a confession which
would have cleared him of all but the technical commission of the crime
of which he was convicted. Now I had not the least idea that the two men
were close at hand, nor that they had had any hand in his death, and so
I kept silence, and let him be buried under the name he had taken--John
Braden.”
Ransford paused and looked at his two listeners as if inviting question
or comment. But neither spoke, and he went on.
“You know what happened after that,” he continued. “It soon became
evident to me that sinister and secret things were going on. There was
the death of the labourer--Collishaw. There were other matters. But even
then I had no suspicion of the real truth--the fact is, I began to have
some strange suspicions about Bryce and that old man Harker--based upon
certain evidence which I got by chance. But, all this time, I had
never ceased my investigations about Wraye and Flood, and when the
bank-manager on whom Brake had called in London was here at the inquest,
I privately told him the whole story and invited his co-operation in
a certain line which I was then following. That line suddenly ran up
against the man Flood--otherwise Fladgate. It was not until this very
week, however, that my agents definitely discovered Fladgate to be
Flood, and that--through the investigations about Flood--Folliot was
found to be Wraye. Today, in London, where I met old Harker at the bank
at which Brake had lodged the money he had brought from Australia, the
whole thing was made clear by the last agent of mine who has had the
searching in hand. And it shows how men may easily disappear from a
certain round of life, and turn up in another years after! When those
two men cheated your father out of that money, they disappeared and
separated--each, no doubt, with his share. Flood went off to some
obscure place in the North of England; Wraye went over to America. He
evidently made a fortune there; knocked about the world for awhile;
changed his name to Folliot, and under that name married a wealthy
widow, and settled down here in Wrychester to grow roses! How and where
he came across Flood again is not exactly clear, but we knew that a
few years ago Flood was in London, in very poor circumstances, and the
probability is that it was then when the two men met again. What we do
know is that Folliot, as an influential man here, got Flood the post
which he has held, and that things have resulted as they have. And
that's all!--all that I need tell you at present. There are details, but
they're of no importance.”
Mary remained silent, but Dick got up with his hands in his pockets.
“There's one thing I want to know,” he said. “Which of those two chaps
killed my father? You said it was accident--but was it? I want to know
about that! Are you saying it was accident just to let things down a
bit? Don't! I want to know the truth.”
“I believe it was accident,” answered Ransford. “I listened most
carefully just now to Fladgate's account of what happened. I firmly
believe the man was telling the truth. But I haven't the least doubt
that Folliot poisoned Collishaw--not the least. Folliot knew that if
the least thing came out about Fladgate, everything would come out about
himself.”
Dick turned away to leave the room.
“Well, Folliot's done for!” he remarked. “I don't care about him, but I
wanted to know for certain about the other.”
* * * * *
When Dick had gone, and Ransford and Mary were left alone, a deep
silence fell on the room. Mary was apparently deep in thought, and
Ransford, after a glance at her, turned away and looked out of the
window at the sunlit Close, thinking of the tragedy he had just
witnessed. And he had become so absorbed in his thoughts of it that
he started at feeling a touch on his arm and looking round saw Mary
standing at his side.
“I don't want to say anything now,” she said, “about what you have just
told us. Some of it I had half-guessed, some of it I had conjectured.
But why didn't you tell me! Before! It wasn't that you hadn't
confidence?”
“Confidence!” he exclaimed. “There was only one reason--I wanted to get
your father's memory cleared--as far as possible--before ever telling
you anything. I've been wanting to tell you! Hadn't you seen that I
hated to keep silent?”
“Hadn't you seen that I wanted to share all your trouble about it?” she
asked. “That was what hurt me--because I couldn't!”
Ransford drew a long breath and looked at her. Then he put his hands on
her shoulders.
“Mary!” he said. “You--you don't mean to say--be plain!--you don't mean
that you can care for an old fellow like me?”
He was holding her away from him, but she suddenly smiled and came
closer to him.
“You must have been very blind not to have seen that for a long time!”
she answered.