“What, then? Did she love you for your supposed wealth?”
“Mr. Clancy, I am tortured. Why have you brought me here?”
“To stop you from playing Meiklejohn’s game. I hear that you camp outside his apartment-house. You and I are going back to New York this very day, and the Bureau will soon find your Winifred. By the way, how did you happen onto the Senator’s connection with the affair?”
Taking hope, Carshaw told his story. Clancy listened while they breakfasted. Then he unfolded a record of local events.
“The Bureau has known for some time that Senator Meiklejohn’s past offered some rather remarkable problems,” he said, dropping his bantering air and speaking seriously. “We have never ceased making guarded inquiries. I am here now for that very purpose. Some thirty years ago, on the death of his father, he and his brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn, inherited an old-established banking business in Vermont. Ralph was a bit of a rake, but local opinion regarded William as a steady-going, domesticated man who would uphold the family traditions. There was no ink on the blotter during upward of ten years, and William was already a candidate for Congress when Ralph was involved in a scandal which caused some talk at the time. The name of a governess in a local house was associated with his, and her name was Bartlett.”
Carshaw glanced at the detective with a quick uneasiness, which Clancy pretended not to notice.
“I have no proof, but absolutely no doubt,” he continued, “that this woman is now known as Rachel Craik. She fell into Ralph Meiklejohn’s clutches then, and has remained his slave ever since. Two years later there was a terrific sensation here. A man named Marchbanks was found lying dead in a lakeside quarry, having fallen or been thrown into it. This quarry was situated near the Meiklejohn house. Mrs. Marchbanks, a ward of Meiklejohn’s father, died in childbirth as the result of shock when she heard of her husband’s death, and inquiry showed that all her money had been swallowed up in loans to her husband for Stock Exchange speculation. Mrs Marchbanks was a noted beauty, and her fortune was estimated at nearly half a million dollars. It was all the more amazing that her husband should have lost such a great sum in reckless gambling, seeing that those who remember him say he was a nice-mannered gentleman of the old type, devoted to his wife, and with a passion for cultivating orchids. Again, why should Mrs. Marchbanks’s bankers and guardians allow her to be ruined by a thoughtless fool?”
Clancy seemed to be asking himself these questions; but Carshaw, so far from New York, and with a mind ever dwelling on Winifred, said impatiently:
“You didn’t bring me here to tell me about some long-forgotten mystery?”
“Ah, quit that hair-trigger business!” snapped Clancy. “You just listen, an’ maybe you’ll hear something interesting. Ralph Vane Meiklejohn left Vermont soon afterward. Twelve years ago a certain Ralph Voles was sentenced to five years in a penitentiary for swindling. Mrs. Marchbanks’s child lived. It was a girl, and baptized as Winifred. She was looked after as a matter of charity by William Meiklejohn, and entrusted to the care of Miss Bartlett, the ex-governess.”