"Eventually I went back to the United States. I became a state senator and became involved in politics.
One day I was in my hotel in Washington when I received a visit from my brother Harry Goldenburg. I was in a way glad to see him, although he was practically a stranger. He impressed me favourably—perhaps the fact that we were so alike physically had as much to do with it as his suave ways and gentle manners. Even at the time I believe he was suspected by the police of being an astute swindler. Of that, of course, I was ignorant. He told me a story of a mail order business he had established in Chicago which was doing great things, but which was hampered for lack of capital. Well, to cut the story short, I lent him five thousand dollars. A month later, he wrote to me for two thousand, and got it. A few weeks after that I read of a great fraud engineered in Central America and there was a three-column portrait in the paper of the man at the bottom of it—my brother. That opened my eyes. When next he came to me—he was audacious enough to do it within the year—I charged him with living by fraud. He laughed in my face and admitted it. When I threatened to call in the police, he merely shrugged his shoulders and asked what I thought of a flaming headline in the press:
'BROTHER OF SENATOR GRELL HELD FOR BIG FRAUDS.'
"I could see it all just as he painted it. My political career was very dear to me just then. Such a thing would have killed it. I knew if I exposed him he was capable of carrying out his threat. However, I told him to get out of the place before I threw him out of the window. He could see I was losing my temper and took a little pistol from his pocket—a Derringer.
"'I have a number of letters which you sent to a lady in Vienna,' he said. 'I know many newspapers which would offer me a good price for 'em.'
"I think it was perhaps fortunate for me that he held the pistol—or I might have done something I should afterwards have regretted. He flung a letter face upwards on the table. It was one of those I had written to Lola Rachael. If he had the rest of the correspondence—and he swore that he had—it would have been deadly in the hands of an unscrupulous political opponent. As you know, electioneering in the States is rather different from what it is here. I was fool enough to pay him money on his promise to suppress them. He would not sell them outright.
"That was the beginning. After that I never had a secure moment unless I was away on an exploring expedition. The moment I reappeared in civilisation my brother would seek me out. He was cunning enough to press me only to the verge of endurance. He could judge exactly how much I would stand. At last, however, I resolved not to yield another penny to his extortions. I cut loose from all my affairs in the United States and came to England. I thought I could fight him when I had reduced the stakes. I found after all that I had increased them, for I met Eileen—Lady Eileen Meredith."
He paused. Neither of his two hearers said anything. An injudicious remark might break the thread of his thoughts.
"When I became engaged to her," Grell resumed, "I knew that it would not be long before Goldenburg would see his chance. I set to work to find Lola, and discovered