"Pshaw!" said Anthony, while Clarice heard this explanation with incredulous horror. "Do you mean to tell me that Jerce would place his neck in a noose in order to gain surgical knowledge?"
"He was going to place my neck in a noose," corrected Ferdy, sulkily, "and Jerce was quite mad about science. I found out a lot about his devilries when I lived with him. He was a vivisection enthusiast, too. Yes! You often wondered, Clarry, why Jane"--he glanced at the dog lying quietly under the sofa--"why Jane hated Jerce so. Well, it was because he started to vivisect her, and lamed her leg."
"What a wretch," cried Clarice, trembling with horror. "Oh, Anthony, I can't bear it--I can't bear it."
"Hush, dear, hush." He sat beside her in the chair, and held her in his arms like a mother nursing a babe. "Go on, Baird," he commanded.
"Jerce wasn't altogether bad," said Ferdy, grudgingly. "He let Jane go, when he found that she wasn't much use as a subject, and gave her to you, Clarry."
"Jane! Jane!" called the girl, faintly, and when the dog came she patted the smooth head. "My poor Jane, how cruelly you have been treated," whereon Jane licked the kind hand which caressed her, and sat down with her tongue out, the picture of happiness.
"Well," said Ferdy, after a pause, "you see how I was placed. I had to kill Uncle Henry, or go to gaol through Jerce. I tried to find out something against Jerce that would give me the whip hand of him, but he was too clever. But I did find out some things. Jerce used to pretend to go to Whitechapel, and sometimes he did, but usually he changed his dress and went on the spree."
"What do you mean by on the spree?" asked Clarice, sharply.
"I shouldn't like to tell you," said Ferdy, with great simplicity, "for Jerce was a terror. I'm no great shakes, but Jerce was worse. He spent money like water on women, buying jewels and houses and furniture and dresses, and running race-horses, and gambling, and, in fact," ended Ferdy, with an air of fatigue, "Jerce was, and is, a blackguard; and even I, don't know everything about him."
"It's impossible that a well-known man like Sir Daniel Jerce could go on in this way," said Anthony, decidedly.