I handed the paper to him and pointed to the lines in question. Having put on his glasses he examined it carefully. "I am sorry they should have made it public so soon, I must admit," he said. "But I don't deny that there is a considerable amount of truth in what that paragraph reports."
"You mean by that that you intend to try and marry Phyllis to the Marquis of Beckenham?"
"The young man has paid her a very considerable amount of attention ever since he arrived in the colony, and only last week he did me the honour of confiding his views to me. You see I am candid with you."
"I thank you for it. I, too, will be candid with you. Mr. Wetherell, you may set your mind at rest at once, this marriage will never take place!"
"And pray be so good as to tell me your reason for such a statement?"
"If you want it bluntly, because the young man now staying at Government House is no more the Marquis of Beckenham than I am. He is a fraud, an impostor, a cheat of the first water, put up to play his part by one of the cleverest scoundrels unhung."
"Mr. Hatteras, this is really going too far. I can quite understand your being jealous of his lordship, but I cannot understand your having the audacity to bring such a foolish charge against him. I, for one, must decline to listen to it. If he had been the fraud you make him out, how would his tutor have got those letters from his Grace the Duke of Glenbarth? Do you imagine his Excellency the Governor, who has known the family all his life, would not have discovered him ere this? No, no, sir! It won't do! If you think so, who has schooled him so cleverly? Who has pulled the strings so wonderfully?"
"Why, Nikola, to be sure!"
Had I clapped a revolver to the old gentleman's head, or had the walls opened and Nikola himself stepped into the room, a greater effect of terror and consternation could not have been produced in the old gentleman's face than did those five simple words. He fell back in his chair gasping for breath, his complexion became ashen in its pallor, and for a moment his whole nervous system seemed unstrung. I sprang to his assistance, thinking he was going to have a fit, but he waived me off, and when he had recovered himself sufficiently to speak, said hoarsely—"What do you know of Dr. Nikola? Tell me, for God's sake!—what do you know of him? Quick, quick!"
Thereupon I set to work and told him my story, from the day of my arrival in Sydney from Thursday Island up to the moment of my reaching his house, described my meeting and acquaintance with the real Beckenham, and all the events consequent upon it. He listened, with an awful terror growing in his face, and when I had finished my narrative with the disappearance of my friend he nearly choked.