"Tell me again of your past," he said. "I want to refresh my memory."
"There's so little to tell that I wonder you don't know every word by heart," said the other, drearily.
"You only told me once, and my memory is a bad one. Go on."
While Jarman lighted his pipe, Frank told how he had been sent home from San Francisco by his father when he was two years of age, and placed under the care of a Quaker aunt called Miss Dorothy Drake. "She lived in Devonshire, at a place called Kingsbridge," went on Lancaster, "and there I was brought up till it was time for me to go to college. I studied at the Elizabethan Grammar School in that town. My father was always coming home, but never appeared. Then, when I was ten, he stopped writing altogether. But my aunt had the money for my education sent to her regularly. I went to Oxford, as you know, and then came, five years ago, to make my mark in London. And a pretty mark I have made!" said Frank, bitterly.
"You never spoke of this past to anyone?"
"No. My aunt particularly told me not to do so. I can't see, myself, why I should have kept silence though," he added, frowning. "There's nothing wrong about my past that I can see."
"No. It would seem as though your father was anxious you should live as quietly as possible, so as not to attract the attentions of adventurers of the Berry type."
"I don't understand."
"Well, that tattooing on your right arm! You never knew what it meant?"
"No. I asked my aunt and she could not tell me. It was on my arm--the Scarlet Bat I mean--when I came from America. Denham, I understand, says that his tattooing was done by Indians."