“Ralph Ingersoll, you mean?” inquired Tom.
“Ralph Ingersoll nothing! His name is Melville, and if he had his rights he’d be riding in a benzine buggy, and wearing diamonds and—and eating turkey every day of his life.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tom, with a curious sense that the name of Melville was familiar to him, somehow.
“Just this, and now that Sawdon’s gone back on me I don’t mind telling about it, that Ralph Melville, for that’s his right name, was put in Sawdon’s charge by his uncle, Stephen Melville, a rich manufacturer of guns and artillery and such like things in New York.”
“Why, he’s the man who’s trying to steal Mr. Peregrine’s invention!” exclaimed Tom.
“I don’t know about any very green invention,” said the clown, “but this I do know, that I’m going to tell what I can about that poor kid. He’s been cheated out of his rights—that’s what he has—and I don’t care who knows it.”
“How did you find all this out?” asked Tom eagerly.
“Why, I was in the dressing tent on the night that the Melville kid was brought to Sawdon, who was an old friend of this Stephen Melville. Melville gave Sawdon a big sum of money every month to keep the kid where no one would know where he was. It seems that when Ralph was a little baby his father was killed in a railroad accident, and the news of his death proved the death of his mother, too. There was a will leaving all the wealth of John Melville (that was Ralph’s father) to his boy. But his uncle was to be his gardeen till he come of age. Well, what does his uncle do but get a fake will made up and spirit the boy away.”
“But hadn’t the boy any friends?” asked Tom. “Well, I heard them talking about a Doctor Longman, or some such name——”
“Wasn’t the name Tallman?” asked Tom, recollecting the mysterious hint about Ralph which the doctor had thrown out.