XI
And there you are! Forger and fraud, jailbird too—all these, as Varick charged, Mr. Mapleson had been. Bab, indeed, was no more old Peter Beeston's grandchild than was the little man himself.
That night the dinner hour came and went disregarded; time sped and midnight drew near before the colloquy in Mrs. Tilney's top-floor back had ended. Mr. Mapleson admitted everything, bit by bit laying bare the whole of that tragic farce, the story of his past. And what a tale it was! Grotesque you'd call it, an outlandish, ludicrous affair, and yet of a pathos, banal as it was, one could not mistake. For Mr. Mapleson was not by nature in any way a criminal. Neither had he become a jailbird in seeking to serve his own ends. That was his story. Not once but twice the little man had become a forger, and each time he had forged only to help others. It had never been for himself.
"You mean you got nothing!" questioned Varick.
"I!" cried Mapleson. His tone was not only surprised, it was resentful. "Certainly not!" he said.
"Good Lord!" Varick murmured.
Absurd as it was, though, Varick could not overlook or disregard the fact that what Mr. Mapleson had done had its sinister side. Not above a week had passed when out of a clear sky the first bolt descended. Fraud and forgery, sad to say, seldom lack effect.