"I don't believe he would have parted with that piece of gold," cried
George, "not if he had been without a sixpence in the world."
"And he was rich. It was the money he carried about him which tempted his murderer. It was near here that he met his fate—on this very spot, perhaps. Joyce told me that before my father-in-law built this house, there was a dilapidated building, which was a meeting-place for the vilest scoundrels in Ratcliff Highway. But how came that coin in Joseph Duncombe's desk?—how, unless Joseph Duncombe was concerned in my brother's murder?"
This idea, once aroused in the mind of George Jernam, was not to be driven away. It seemed too hideous for reality; but it took possession of his mind, nevertheless, and he sat alone, trying to shut horrible fancies out of his brain, but trying uselessly.
He remembered Joseph Duncombe's wealth. Had all that wealth been honestly won?
He remembered the captain's restlessness—his feverish desire to run away from a home in which he possessed so much to render life happy.
Might not that eagerness to return to the sailor's wild, roving life have its root in the tortures of a guilty conscience?
"His very kindness to me may be prompted by a vague wish to make some paltry atonement for a dark wrong done my brother," thought George.
He remembered Joseph Duncombe's seeming goodness of heart, and wondered if such a man could possibly be concerned in the darkest crime of which mankind can be guilty. But he remembered also that the worst and vilest of men were often such accomplished hypocrites as to remain unsuspected of evil until the hour when accident revealed their iniquity.
"It is so, perhaps, with this man," thought George Jernam. "That air of truth and goodness may be but a mask. I know what a master-passion the greed of gain is with some men. It has doubtless been the passion of this man's heart. The wretches who lured Valentine Jernam to this house were tools of Joseph Duncombe's. How otherwise could this token have fallen into his hands?"
He tried to find some other answer to this question; but he tried in vain. That little piece of gold seemed to fasten the dark stigma of guilt upon the absent owner of the house.