“You remember the name of Ransome?” said Greswold interrogatively.
“Yes, it recalls certain events. Very sad circumstances connected with a lady who was our client. You would not wish me to go over that ground, I am sure, Mr. Greswold?”
“No, there is no occasion to do that. I hope you believe that I was blameless—or as free from blame as any man can be in his domestic conduct—in the matter to which you have alluded?”
“I have no reason to suppose otherwise. I have never been on the scene of the event. I knew nothing of it until nearly a year after it happened, and then my sources of information were of the slenderest, and my knowledge of painful details never went beyond this office. Pray be assured that I do not wish to say one word that can pain you; I would only ask you to consider me as a totally uninformed person. I have no charge to make—upon anybody’s account. I have no questions to ask. The past is forgotten, so far as I and my firm are concerned.”
“Mr. Pergament, for me the past is still living, and it is exercising a baneful influence over my present existence. It may blight the rest of my life. You, perhaps, may help to extricate me from a labyrinth of perplexity. I want to know who my first wife was. What was the real name of the young lady who called herself Vivien Faux, and whom I married under that name before the British Consul at Florence? Who were her parents?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Do you mean that you cannot, or that you will not?”
“I mean both. I do not know that unfortunate lady’s parentage. I have no positive knowledge on the subject, though I may have my own theory. I know that certain persons were interested in the young lady’s welfare, and that certain funds were placed in our charge for her maintenance. After her death, the capital for which we had been trustees reverted to those persons. That is the sum-total of the lady’s history so far as it is known to us.”
“Will you tell me the name of the person who gave my wife her income, who placed her at the school at Brussels, by whose instructions she was transferred to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Mortimer? I want to know that man’s name, for that man must have been her father.”
“When my father and I undertook that business for my client, we pledged ourselves to absolute secrecy. The facts of the case are not known even to the other members of the firm. The person in question was our client, and the secret was lodged with us. There is not a priest of the Church of Rome who holds the secrets of the confessional more sacred than we hold that secret.”