Jean le Roi drew in his breath with a gasp.
“Oh!” he muttered. “So they sent nothing!”
“Not one sou, Jean—not one sou! And all the while the time of your release was drawing near. What could I do! Well, I raised the money. How I will not tell you, my boy, but I went on a fruit boat from Havre to Southampton, and from there down to Thorpe. I saw the old man Stephen Hurd. It was on a Sunday night that I arrived, and I found him alone. He was as hard, Jean, as his letters. When I pressed him he ordered me out of the house. I would not go. I said that I would see my daughter-in-law. I would remain until I saw her, I said, even if I slept under a hedge. Again he ordered me out of the house. I was firm; I refused. Then he struck me, there was a quarrel, and he fell. I thought at first that he was unconscious, but when I examined him—he was dead.”
Johnson finished his speech in a stealthy whisper, leaning half way across the table. Jean le Roi poured himself out more brandy, but he was unmoved.
“The old trick, I suppose,” he remarked carelessly, making a swift movement with his hand.
“No! no!” Johnson declared earnestly. “I used no weapon! It was an accident, a pure accident. Remember that this is his son. He would not be here if it was not quite certain that it was accident—and accident alone.”
Jean le Roi lifted his head and gazed curiously at Stephen Hurd.
“So you,” he murmured, “are my brother-in-law?”
Johnson leaned once more across the table.
“It is where you, where we all have been deceived,” he said impressively. “Listen. She was never the daughter of Stephen Hurd at all. It was a schoolgirl’s freak to take that name, when she was eluding her chaperon and amusing herself in Paris. Stephen Hurd was her servant.”