"But how—how?"
"He was murdered."
Harry seemed to have known it all along. He could not utter another syllable. But his wild eyes and his outstretched hands asked their question plainly.
"By your friend Gordon Lowndes," said Scrafton coolly.
Harry came down heavily in his chair, and his hands lay on the desk, and his face lay in his hands; but he was acutely conscious, and he heard the furtive trickle as Scrafton seized the opportunity of replenishing his glass. The man drank. To anybody but an innocent it might have been obvious four years ago. He was one of those whom drink made pallid and ferocious; to get more from him while still sober, Harry started up as suddenly as he had subsided, causing the other to spill some liquor in his beard.
"Take all you want," cried Harry, "only tell me everything first. I must know everything now. I have suspected it so long."
He leant forward to listen, this time with an elbow on each knee, but with his face again buried in his hands. Scrafton kept a gleaming eye upon him, as he dried his beard with his coat-sleeve, and supplemented the spirit with a couple of his most sickening inhalations.
"I will begin at the beginning," said he; "but you needn't have any fears about my not reaching the end, for I've never had less than a bottle a night when I could get it, and the man doesn't breathe who ever saw Jeremiah Scrafton the worse. What you have here is only enough to make me thirsty, and I may want another bottle broached before I'm done. Meanwhile, to begin at the beginning, you must know that it is some years now since I made our friend's acquaintance at Richmond. We spotted each other one night by the river, and though he was old enough to be your father, and I was old enough to be his, I'm hanged if it wasn't like a man and a woman! He took to me, and I took to him. We were both clever men, and we were both poor men. His head was full of ways of making his pile, and my head was full of one way worth all his put together. You're a dunce at mathematics, Master Ringrose. Have you ever played roulette?"
"Never."
"Then you wouldn't understand my system, even if I was to tell it you, and I wouldn't do that for a thousand pounds. Lowndes has offered me more than that for it—wanted to form a syndicate to work it—offered me half profits; but not for Jeremiah! I'll double the capital that's put in, and I'll pay it back with cent. per cent. interest, but I'll rot before I do more. I told him so years ago, and I've never budged. I never told him or anybody else my system, and I never will. I may not live to work it now. I may never get another chance of the capital. But if I don't benefit from it, nobody else ever shall; it's my secret, and it'll go with me to the worm. One comfort is that nobody else is likely to hit upon it—no other living mathematician has the brain!"