The man accepted the cigar with a bow, lighted it, and then drawing a chair into the center of the circle which we had formed, he leaned back nonchalantly and began his tale.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE MOTIVE
"You must know, then," said Philip Darwin, "that I was the child of a second marriage contracted between my father and a young woman who had just begun to earn a name for herself upon the stage. She endured two years of walking the straight and narrow path as his wife, and then she eloped with an actor friend. My father hushed the scandal and withdrew from social life, becoming morose and bitter and narrower than ever, watching over me with a zealous eye as I grew older, and endeavoring to eradicate the talents which I had inherited from her, looking with particular disfavor on my ability to act and mimic the speech of those about me.
"Knowing my inherited love of pleasures of all kinds he strove to curb me by refusing to let me go out in the evenings with my young companions. This I considered an indignity since I was then old enough to be my own master, and so I took matters into my own hand, retiring early and then sneaking away from my rooms to join my friends. This practice I continued until by an unforeseen chance I was among those arrested in a raid upon a gambling-house. I would have given a false name but unfortunately the Sergeant knew me, and of course the affair came to the ears of my father.
"He was exceedingly wroth and threatened to disinherit me if I ever disobeyed him again. I did not want to lose my chance to secure his fortune, which would come to me intact since Robert, my older brother, was dead, and my sister, Leila, had run away from home, so I remained at home on my best behavior. It was just at this time that I came across an old book in the study that gave the history of the house from which ours had been copied. I investigated and found the door in the masonry, took an impression of the lock, had a key made, and so discovered the secret room. That room gave me an idea. I knew that it was next the study although it had never been cut through, but this fact did not trouble me. My father had planned to take me to Europe with him, but I told him that I preferred to remain at home and look after the business, into which I had been taken as junior partner on my twenty-first birthday. Thinking that I had reformed he gave his permission for me to have a safe built in the study, since I had pointed out to him that now that I was a man of affairs I needed such a contrivance for my personal papers. But though he left for Europe without me he did not altogether trust me, for I discovered that his lawyer had orders to telegraph my father if at any time he learned that I had deviated from the rule of conduct laid down for me to follow.
"I determined to outwit him. I sent Mason away, hired some workmen, had a door cut between the study and the secret room and had a safe built into the wall as a blind. Then I spent the rest of the year in evolving the character of Cunningham. He should be a young law student, red-haired, red-bearded, fastidious. Also as Darwin, I adopted glasses to make myself and Cunningham as opposite as possible in appearance.
"When my father returned he heard no scandal of me for Cunningham had taken young Darwin's place in the beaumonde. Thereafter I had no difficulty in getting away, retiring early and then leaving the house by the secret entrance, after changing to Cunningham in the little room.
"After my father's death Cunningham was of no further value to me, but I was too clever to utterly destroy him, since I had no idea when I might need him again. So he told his friends that a relative had died abroad, leaving him a fortune, and that he was going on a trip around the world. Then Darwin came back and took his place in the social world.