"I tell you," he burst out, at last--"I tell you, it's no good your trying to knock old Charlie to me. I won't stand for it. Old Charlie's my best friend, and I'd believe him before I'd believe anybody in the world. You've got a knife out for old Charlie, that's what's the matter with you."
"And your sister?" suggested Ste. Marie. "Your mother? You'd hardly know your mother if you could see her to-day. It has pretty nearly killed her."
"Ah, they're all--they're all against me!" the lad cried. "They've always stood together against me. Helen, too!"
"You wouldn't think they were against you if you could just see them once now," said Ste. Marie.
And Arthur Benham gave a sort of shamefaced sob, saying:
"Ah, cut it out! Cut it out! Go on, then, and talk, if you want to, I don't care. I don't have to listen. Talk, if you're pining for it."
And Ste. Marie, as briefly as he could, told him the truth of the whole affair from the beginning, as he had told it to Coira O'Hara. Only he laid special stress upon Charles Stewart's present expectations from the new will, and he assured the boy that no document his grandfather might have asked him to sign could have given away his rights in his father's fortune, since he was a minor and had no legal right to sign away anything at all even if he wished to.
"If you will look back as calmly and carefully as you can," he said, "you will find that you didn't begin to suspect your grandfather of anything wrong until you had talked with Captain Stewart. It was your uncle's explanation of the thing that made you do that. Well, remember what he had at stake--I suppose it is a matter of several millions of francs. And he needs them. His affairs are in a bad way."
He told also about the pretended search which Captain Stewart had so long maintained, and of how he had tried to mislead the other searchers whose motives were honest.
"It has been a gigantic gamble, my friend," he said, at the last. "A gigantic and desperate gamble to get the money that should be yours. You can end it by the mere trouble of climbing over that wall yonder and taking the Clamart tram back to Paris. As easily as that you can end it--and, if I am not mistaken, you can at the same time save an old man's life--prolong it at the very least." He took a step forward. "I beg you to go!" he said, very earnestly. "You know the whole truth now. You must see what danger you have been and are in. You must know that I am telling you the truth. I beg you to go back to Paris."