He paused, evidently trying to sort out his story. Then, catching sight of Fayre’s face of bewilderment:
“I expect it all seems an unholy muddle to you. I’d better get back to the beginning. Miss Allen, as she was then, was at St. Swithin’s with me, as you probably know by now. She married my special pal, Baxter, and I can assure you I did my best to put a spoke in her wheel there. It was no good, however; Baxter was almost insane about her and wouldn’t listen to a thing against her, and, knowing what I knew about her, it made me pretty sick, as you may imagine. So much so that, after they married, I saw very little of them.
“I’d got a big, very poor practice then and was too busy, anyway, to look up old friends. Then one day he turned up, half demented, and told me she’d gone off with Draycott and left him with their small boy on his hands. To make a long story short, he ended by divorcing her after trying in vain to get her back. I went to see her myself, much as I disliked her, the day after Baxter’s visit to me. I found her at a hotel with Draycott and she laughed in my face when I tried to get her to return to her husband. After the divorce he went to pieces altogether and I had my hands full, I can tell you. When he got past work I persuaded him to come to me with the boy, and he died soon afterwards in my house. I’d got fond of the little chap by then, and I stuck to him, there being no other relations he could go to. He’s at a preparatory school now and going to a public school next term. That’s the principal reason why I didn’t want my connection with this business to come out. I gave him my name and he’s supposed to be my nephew and, for his sake, I don’t want to drag up the past now.”
“I see that,” said Fayre sympathetically. “In fact, I’m beginning to realize now how you must have cursed my interference.”
“Your butting in as you did was a calamity, from my point of view, and, like a fool, I lost my temper and tried to bluff it out. You see, I’d concealed his identity with a good deal of care and I began to see myself in the witness-box and photographs of the little chap in the papers, all my trouble gone for nothing, as it were, and I saw red.”
“Does the boy know he’s Baxter’s son?”
“He knows his name was Baxter originally, but he wouldn’t connect his mother with Mrs. Draycott. He thinks she died before he came to me with his father. I never tried to conceal his parentage from him; in fact, I’ve done my best to keep the memory of his father alive as he was before he let himself go to pieces. Fortunately the little chap was too young to notice much in those days. No, it was his mother I was afraid of. She’d got no legal claim on the boy, but I knew her. She was a greedy woman where money was concerned and an infernally clever one. Even when Draycott was alive she was eternally hard up and there was very little she’d stick at to raise money. I never saw her again, as I said, but I kept track of her and, from what I heard, I’m pretty certain that, if she’d known where to find the boy, she’d have put the screw on me, little as I should have been able to give her. She knew I’d do a good deal to prevent her from getting at him. She was an attractive woman and a good enough actress to make a very pretty and affecting scene if she’d chosen to look him up and play the fond mother. She’d have got round him, I’ve no doubt, and she knew I couldn’t afford to risk that. That was why I changed his name and I was very careful not to talk openly of where he was. You must remember that she detested me and, apart from the money, she was quite capable of going and worrying the boy out of sheer spite.”
“She wouldn’t descend to blackmail, surely,” protested Fayre.
He had disliked Mrs. Draycott and everything that he had since heard of her had been to her discredit, but he found it difficult to believe that a sister of Miss Allen should have sunk low enough for blackmail.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Gregg shrewdly. “She came of good stock and was brought up according to the traditions of her class, but, believe me, when a woman’s once started on the downward slope she gets pretty callous about what she does. I give you my word that, bad as the shock of finding her dead was, it had less effect on me that night than the discovery that she was Miss Allen’s sister. I realized then, for the first time, the sort of people she had sprung from and I came very near to giving myself away, I was so surprised. Oddly enough, in spite of the name, I had never connected them with each other.”