“Ah!” said Nick. “Now I think I understand. Now I think it will not be necessary to ask you any more of these harrowing questions. Now, I think I know all the truth.”
“Please tell me what you mean,” murmured Mercedes.
“Some time ago,” replied Nick, speaking slowly, “I had a long talk with your maid, Sarah. From her talk I gathered that when Paul Rogers appeared here in this house as valet to your brother, Reginald, you discovered that he was not a stranger to you. I also discovered that there was a secret connected with your knowing him, which she would not under any circumstances reveal, not even to save your life. When Ramon Orizaba was murdered by Paul Rogers, it was only the horror of the thing which affected you—there was no sorrow in your soul. You believed yourself well rid of both of them, and yet, you were startled lest you could no longer supposedly communicate with your brother, Tom.
“Wait, Mercedes; let me finish. I know that while you have been abroad, you have caused every prison in France and England to be searched, as well as it could be done by others, for traces of somebody. I know that you constantly supplied Orizaba with money, and that even now, in a roundabout way, you are supplying an emissary of Paul Rogers—in short, that you are furnishing the very funds with which he is bribing others to murder your father, mother, and your brother, Reginald, as well as your own self. You do not know that; but I do. You think that he is sending a large part of that money abroad to make easier the prison life of your brother, Tom, and you have so great an amount of money at your command that ten thousand dollars, or even a hundred thousand, is as a drop in the bucket against the purchase of added comforts for him.”
Her head was bowed in her hands now, but she was not weeping.
“Do you remember your horror, Mercedes, when you believed, for a time, that Reginald was the murderer of Orizaba? Do you remember how grateful you were when it was proved to you that he could not have done the deed? And that even after it was proved to you, you still felt gratitude toward Rogers, because he left behind him a letter in which he confessed that he did the deed himself? And do you not see the cold calculation and planning of the fiend through it all? He thought at first that he would convince you that Reginald killed Orizaba. Later, he became afraid that his plans in that direction would not work, and so he made a play to obtain your eternal gratitude by confessing that he did it himself, and thus saving Reginald.”
“And if your own clear reasoning had not convinced me of the real truth, I might still have reason, in my thoughts, for eternal gratitude to him,” murmured Mercedes.
“Exactly. But, the cupidity of Rogers grows with his attainments. Having placed himself in a position where he could command almost any sum from you at any moment, he became dissatisfied with that, and wanted the principal—and, remember this: But for your brother, Tom, who has never been inside a French prison nor in France, so far as I know, and who came to me with a warning of the plot against you, Rogers would have been in a fair way to accomplish every hellish thing he set out to do. Tell me, now, how you first knew Rogers.”
“When I was at school in France he came to me with a message from my brother.”
“Forged,” said Nick.