"Good gracious! He had murdered him?"
"Yes. And from that time he seemed a different man. I saw that he was mad. I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put under restraint. I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum. But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a bitter feeling of hatred of myself."
"Why didn't you give information—to the police, if necessary?"
"How could I? My own father! I believed he would be hanged if he was caught. I believe so still. The last time I saw him he seemed sane, except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who, it seems, is my half-sister. But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on the head, and tried to drown me. There, now you know as much as I do. Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends, with such a burden as that on my mind?"
Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.
"Poor lad!" he said at last. "Poor lad! I think you might have found some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly difficult position. Jolly difficult! And so you never even told Max?"
"No, though I more than once felt inclined to. But it was such a ghastly business altogether that I thought I'd better hold my tongue, especially as—I was afraid—it might filter through him to—to somebody else—somebody who couldn't be told a beastly secret like that."
Mr. Wedmore nodded.
"And this girl—this Carrie?" said he.
Dudley's face lighted up.