“I have known you for half your life, my boy,” he said, after a pause, “and I’ll tell you this. There is no man I know, whom I would sooner Vera married, than yourself. You have your faults, but—but you will be good to her, always good to her. Ah! I know you will, and that is as much as any woman should expect. And Gwen is glad, too, that you are going to marry Vera. But now, Dick, there is this thing I must tell you. I—I should not rest after death, if I died without your knowing.”
Again he paused, and, in silent expectation, I waited for the old sportsman to speak.
“You have lately come to know,” he said at last, “that there is to do with me, and with my family, a mystery of some kind. Part of my secret, kept so well for all these years, I believe you have recently discovered. The rest you don’t know. Well—I’ll tell it—to—you—now.”
With an effort, he shifted his body into a more comfortable position. Then, after coughing violently, he went on—
“Dick, prepare yourself for a shock,” he said, staring straight at me with his fevered eyes. “I have—I have been a forger, and—and worse—a murderer!”
I started. What he said seemed impossible. He must suddenly be raving again. I refused to believe either statement, and I frankly told him so.
“I am not surprised at your refusing to believe me,” he said, calmly. “I don’t look like a criminal, perhaps—least of all like a forger, or a murderer. Yet I am both. It all occurred years ago. Ah! it’s a nightmare—a horrible dream, which has lived with me all my life since.”
He paused, then continued.
“It happened in the house I had then just bought—my house in Belgrave Street. The governor had left me money, but I was ambitious—avaricious, if you like. I wanted more money—much more. And I wanted it at once. I could not brook delay. I had travelled a good deal, even then, and I was still a bachelor. During my wanderings, I had become acquainted with all sorts and conditions of people. In Mexico I had met Henry Whichelo, and on our way home to England on the same ship, we became very intimate. Another man on board, with whom I had also grown intimate, was Dan Paulton—or Dago, as his friends called him. A man of energy and dash, and of big ideas, he somehow fascinated and appealed to me. Well—he—he discovered my ambition to grow rich quickly and without trouble. He was a plausible and most convincing talker—he is that still, though less than he was—and by degrees he broke it to me that he was interested in, and in some way associated with, a group of ‘continental financiers,’ as he called them. Later, I discovered, when too late, that really they were bank-note forgers! He talked to me in such a way that gradually, against my will, and quite against my better nature, I became interested in the operations of these men. And, as he had thus ensnared me by his insidious talk, so, in the same way, he had ensnared our companion, Whichelo.”
And he paused, because of his difficulty in breathing.