“Yes.”
“He got the luggage from the dock all right, I suppose?”
Geraldine counted five before replying and then five more. He had better know the truth.
“There was no luggage on the dock.”
“What!”
“Our trunks and bags were taken on at Genoa and are all packed in the hold or in our staterooms. Walter was working you for money. He saw us together in the Naples Museum and was trying to blackmail us, that is all.”
He said nothing.
Geraldine sketched briefly the story of this youthful derelict and of their seeming control of him lately. She told how their only safety was in keeping money from him, how they had warned everybody and how the mother had believed she had broken down his very will to beg. Then she gave Richard the result of the interview in the hall; and the frightful outbreak and their days of struggle with a drink-crazed man.
“My refusal to pay up,” she said, “stirred his courage, I suppose. It angered him into action. He went straight to you.”
“And I gave him money,” Richard spoke thoughtfully, “the money that sent him down and out. That makes me responsible.”