And then Mrs. Ilam proceeded, with Carpentaria’s help:
“My son must tell me about that.”
“No,” Jetsam put in authoritatively; “I will tell you about that. Ilam—or rather I should say Kilmarnock—is in no condition to make speeches. When I first came to this place to begin my struggle for what was mine, I really had not got much of a plan in my head. It was so difficult to make a start. It may seem to you quite a simple thing”—he turned away from Mrs. Ilam and addressed Carpentaria—“to go up to a person and say to him, ‘Look here, you are standing in my shoes, and your mother has committed an act foully criminal!’ But in practice it isn’t quite as easy as it seems. You want a gigantic nerve to make a statement like that as if you meant it—although you do mean it. It sounds rather wild, you see. And then I met my supplanter rather before I was ready for him. The truth is that he came into that little place where I was hiding in just the same way as you came in, Mr. Carpentaria. He caught me like you did—a trespasser; and, of course, I was at a disadvantage. He spoke to me very roughly, and then angered me——”
“How could I know who you were?” demanded Ilam.
“Exactly. You couldn’t know. But the effect on me was the same. Put yourself in my place, Mr. Kilmarnock. I had been cheated out of my whole career. You were in unlawful possession of it; and on the top of that you came along, and behaved to me as if I were a dog. Well”—here Jetsam addressed his stepmother again—“I told him who I was, and pretty quick too, and I could see from his manner that he knew the history of our origin, and the substitution on Exeter platform.”
“I knew,” Ilam admitted with a certain sadness. “My mother had once told me—I came across traces of a mystery, and she told me.”
“And you did nothing?” queried Jetsam. “It was not on your conscience?”
“You must recollect that we had the legal proof of your death. What was there to be done? I could not have made restitution to the dead, even had my mother permitted.”
“But when I told you who I was,” rejoined Mr. Jetsam, “unless I am much mistaken, you believed what I said.”
“I did,” Ilam agreed. “Moreover, you bear a most distinct likeness to a portrait of my stepfather, painted when he was about your age.”