“And what did he say?”
Rathbury laughed contemptuously.
“Say? Oh, not much. Pretty much what he said about this affair—that when he was convicted the time before he was an innocent man. He’s certainly a good hand at playing the innocent game.”
“And of what was he convicted?”
“Oh, of course, we know all about it—now. As soon as we found out who he really was, we had all the particulars turned up. Aylmore, or Ainsworth (Stephen Ainsworth his name really is) was a man who ran a sort of what they call a Mutual Benefit Society in a town right away up in the North—Cloudhampton—some thirty years ago. He was nominally secretary, but it was really his own affair. It was patronized by the working classes—Cloudhampton’s a purely artisan population—and they stuck a lot of their brass, as they call it, in it. Then suddenly it came to smash, and there was nothing. He—Ainsworth, or Aylmore—pleaded that he was robbed and duped by another man, but the court didn’t believe him, and he got seven years. Plain story you see, Spargo, when it all comes out, eh?”
“All stories are quite plain—when they come out,” observed Spargo. “And he kept silence now, I suppose, because he didn’t want his daughters to know about his past?”
“Just so,” agreed Rathbury. “And I don’t know that I blame him. He thought, of course, that he’d go scot-free over this Marbury affair. But he made his mistake in the initial stages, my boy—oh, yes!”
Spargo got up from his desk and walked around his room for a few minutes, Rathbury meanwhile finding and lighting another cigar. At last Spargo came back and clapped a hand on the detective’s shoulder.
“Look here, Rathbury!” he said. “It’s very evident that you’re now going on the lines that Aylmore did murder Marbury. Eh?”
Rathbury looked up. His face showed astonishment.