He was thoroughly in earnest, and nothing was further from him than any thought of lightness or flippancy. But there was a calm familiarity and matter-of-course acquaintanceship with his subject about his tone that produced a slight quiver about the corners of the little doctor’s mouth. He did not speak, however, and the movement with which he took his cigar from between his lips and turned to Falconer was merely sympathetic and interested.
“Of course, I know it’s an unprofitable subject enough,” continued Falconer almost apologetically. “We shall never be much the wiser on the subject, struggle as we may. But still, now and then it seems to be forced on one. It has been forced on me to-day.”
“Apropos of William Romayne?” suggested Dr. Aston, so delicately that the words seemed rather a sympathetic comment than a question.
“Yes,” returned Falconer. “We have been looking through his private papers.” He paused a moment, and then continued as if drawn on almost in spite of himself. “You knew him by repute, I dare say, doctor. He had one of those strong personalities which get conveyed even by hearsay. A clever man, striking and dominating, universally liked and deferred to. Yet he must have been as absolutely without principle as this table is without feeling.”
He struck the little table between them with his open hand as he spoke; and then, as though the expression of his feelings had begotten, as is often the case, an irresistible desire to relieve himself further, he answered Dr. Aston’s interested ejaculation as if it had been the question the doctor was at once too well-bred and too full of tact to put.
“There were no papers connected with this last disgraceful affair, of course; those, as you know, I dare say, were all seized in London. It’s the man’s past life that these private papers throw light on. Light, did I say? It was a life of systematic, cold-blooded villainy, for which no colours could be dark enough.”
He had uttered his last sentence involuntarily, as it seemed, and now he laid down his cigar, and turning to Dr. Aston, began to speak low and quickly.
“They are papers of all kinds,” he said. “Letters, business documents, memoranda of every description, and two-thirds of them at least have reference to fraud and wrong of one kind or another. Not one penny that man possessed can have been honestly come by. His business was swindling; every one of his business transactions was founded on fraud. He can have had no faith or honesty of any sort or kind. He was living with another woman before he had been married a year. All that woman’s letters—he deceived her abominably, and it’s fortunate that she died—are annotated and endorsed like his ‘business’ memoranda; evidently kept deliberately as so much stored experience for future use!”
Dr. Aston had listened with a keen, alert expression of intent interest. His cigar was forgotten, and he laid it down now as if impatient of any distraction, and leant forward over the table with his shrewd, kindly little eyes fixed eagerly on Falconer. Human nature was a hobby of his.
Falconer’s confidence, or more truly perhaps the manner of it, had swept away all conventional barriers, and the elder man asked two or three quick, penetrating questions.