“I’ll tell you how it is, if it won’t bore you,” said he.
“On the contrary, I should be exceedingly interested.”
“I think, after your kind attention to me, I cannot do less than relieve
any curiosity that you may feel. You must know that my father was
Stanislaus Stanniford, the banker.”
Stanniford, the banker! I remembered the name at once. His flight from
the country some seven years before had been one of the scandals and
sensations of the time.
“I see that you remember,” said my companion. “My poor father left the
country to avoid numerous friends, whose savings he had invested in an
unsuccessful speculation. He was a nervous, sensitive man, and the
responsibility quite upset his reason. He had committed no legal
offence. It was purely a matter of sentiment. He would not even face his
own family, and he died among strangers without ever letting us know
where he was.”
“He died!” said I.
“We could not prove his death, but we know that it must be so, because
the speculations came right again, and so there was no reason why he
should not look any man in the face. He would have returned if he were
alive. But he must have died in the last two years.”
“Why in the last two years?”
“Because we heard from him two years ago.”
“Did he not tell you then where he was living?”
“The letter came from Paris, but no address was given. It was when my
poor mother died. He wrote to me then, with some instructions and some
advice, and I have never heard from him since.”
“Had you heard before?”
“Oh, yes, we had heard before, and that’s where our mystery of the
sealed door, upon which you stumbled to-night, has its origin. Pass me
that desk, if you please. Here I have my father’s letters, and you are
the first man except Mr. Perceval who has seen them.”
“Who is Mr. Perceval, may I ask?”
“He was my father’s confidential clerk, and he has continued to be the
friend and adviser of my mother and then of myself. I don’t know what we
should have done without Perceval. He saw the letters, but no one else.
This is the first one, which came on the very day when my father fled,
seven years ago. Read it to yourself.”