“Dear me! Was there an inquest?”
These direct questions, put timorously, had the effect of making John Bradfield so furious that he stammered as he spoke:
“There was no inquest. The body could not be found!”
“Perhaps,” suggested Marrable, “he wasn’t burnt at all. Perhaps he escaped, or perhaps——”
Although he paused, significantly, John Bradfield did not urge him to go on. There was a silence before Alfred said, in the same infantile manner as before:
“And what became of all his money, John?”
“He never had any.”
“But he ought to have had plenty,” rejoined Marrable, in the same sing-song voice. “Now, I’ll make a clean breast of it, John. Not that I wish to make myself unpleasant, as I said before, but when I was down here at Christmas I thought things looked fishy (I don’t want to be unkind, but they really did); so when I got back to town I got a friend to cable over to Melbourne for me, and find out the particulars of Gilbert Wryde’s will.”
Then there was a pause. John Bradfield looked, not at his old chum, but out at the sea, which lay a bright blue grey in the sunshine. To think that he should have escaped detection all these years, to be brought to book at last by such a paltry creature—that was the thought that was surging in his mind as he stood digging his nails into his own flesh and not listening very eagerly for the next words, for he knew so well what they would be.