“I will tell you the truth, Sir Gilbert, and nothing but the truth; I really will,” whined Luigi, who was seated sideways on a chair, huddled up and with one leg crossed under him, his back arched and his head sunk between his shoulders. Every minute or two he was seized with a spasm of nervous trembling, resulting partly from fright and partly from the chill due to his long imprisonment in the strong room.
“So be it,” replied Sir Gilbert grimly. “But bear this in mind, that I know more, far more than you think I do.” He paused, cleared his voice and then continued. “Luigi Rispani, you are not my grandson—that I know already. But tell me this: what relation are you to Captain Verinder, and also to the widow of my late son, John Alexander Clare?”
“Captain Verinder is my great-uncle. Mrs. Clare is my aunt—my father and she were brother and sister.”
“How, and with whom did the fraud originate, which led to your imposing yourself on me as my grandson?”
“It was all my great-uncle’s doing. It was he who originated the scheme, and it was he who persuaded my aunt and me to join him in carrying it out.”
“After all, then, my instinct was not at fault,” murmured Sir Gilbert to himself. “It was not prejudice, but Nature’s own monition that bade me beware of Verinder.”
“You see, Sir Gilbert, this is how it was,” went on Luigi, who now seemed eagerly anxious to unbosom himself. “When Mrs. Clare came to London she knew nothing about her husband having been your son. He died in America, and, as it would appear, without having told her anything about his relatives in England. It was Captain Verinder who ferreted out the facts of the case, and everything that followed was due to him. Mrs. Clare’s only child had died when it was a few months old, but he persuaded her that if she were to introduce herself to you, bringing a son and heir with her, she would have a far greater claim on your generosity, and might count upon a very different reception at your hands, from any that would be given her as the childless widow she really was. Of myself I can only say that I was weak enough to be overborne by my uncle’s persuasions, and—and that I ultimately consented to allow myself to be passed off as your grandson.”
Luigi ceased, and for a little while no one spoke. Sir Gilbert, in an absent way, was rubbing his eyeglasses with his pocket-handkerchief, and apparently turning over in his mind what had just been told him. Looking up at length, he said: “You have been frank with me so far, or so I have reason to believe. I hope you will not be less so in answering my next question. Tell me, then, if you please, to what circumstances it was owing that I found you locked up in my strong room.”
Luigi hung his head in a way he had not done before, while two spots of vivid red flamed out on his sallow cheeks. Then, flinging up his head with a sort of half-defiant air, he said: “I promised to tell you the truth, Sir Gilbert, and I will. Last night, after waiting till the clock had struck twelve, I came here, picked the lock of your drawer, found the key of the strong room, opened the door and went inside. My intention was to abstract certain American bonds which I knew were there, and pass them over to my uncle for him to dispose of.”
“This latter transaction, then, was one in which your uncle was also mixed up?”