'Detectives are no good. Perhaps the chief didn't care to press the business. Perhaps he learned enough to be satisfied that Checkley was the man. Perhaps he was unwilling to lose an old servant. Perhaps the villain confessed the thing. It all comes back to me fresh and clear, though for eight long years I have not talked with a soul about it.'
'Tell me,' said George, a little out of sympathy with this dead and buried forgery—'tell me where you have been—what you have done—and what you are doing now.'
'Presently—presently,' he replied with impatience. 'I am sure now that I was wrong. I should not have left the country. I should have taken a lodging openly, and waited and looked on. Yes; that would have been better. Then I should have seen that old villain, Checkley, in the dock. Perhaps it is not yet too late. Still—eight years. Who can expect a commissionaire to remember a single message after eight years?'
'Well—and now tell me,' George asked again, 'what you have been doing.'
'The black-sheep always turns up, doesn't he? You learn at home that he has got a berth in the Rocky Mountains; but he jacks it up and goes to Melbourne, where he falls on his feet; but gets tired, and moves on to New Zealand, and so home again. It's a regular round.'
'You are apparently the black-sheep whose wool is dyed white. There are threads of gold in it. You look prosperous.'
'A few years ago I was actually in the possession of money. Then I became poor again. After a good many adventures I became a journalist. The profession is in America the refuge of the educated unsuccessful, and the hope of the uneducated unsuccessful. I am doing as well as journalists in America generally do: I am over here as the representative of a Francisco paper. And I expect to stay for some time—so long as I can be of service to my people. That's all.'
'Well—it might be a great deal worse. And won't you come to Pembridge Crescent with me?'
'When the cloud is lifted: not before. And—George—not a word about me. Don't tell—yet—even Elsie.'