“And—and seeing what had happened, Paulton, I truly believe, went mad,” said the prostrate man. “It took Whichelo, and Henderson and myself, all our strength to hold him down. Gwen was on the sofa, in hysterics. What surprised me was that nobody in the street outside was attracted by the uproar. I suppose they couldn’t hear it through the double windows. I won’t go into further details of that awful night. I can’t bear to think of them, even now. But from that night onward, Paulton had me in his power. It was Whichelo who suggested embalming Sutton’s body and hiding it in the house. He would himself perform the embalming. He had embalmed bodies in Mexico, and understood the process.”
He remained silent for some seconds.
“And so that was done,” he continued. “Paulton and Henderson had left the house, the former satisfied at the thought that he could now use me as his cat’s-paw—and by Heaven! he has done so! The coin we had in the house, some genuine, but most of it base, we hid away with the body between the ceiling and the floor. None knew our secret but my wife, Gwen—who almost revealed it during an attack of brain fever, which resulted from the shock she had received—Paulton, Henderson and myself. Vera was not old enough to know, but when she reached her seventeenth year, we decided to tell her the whole story, deeming it wiser, for various reasons, to do so. And now you understand.”
“And during all the years I have known you,” I said, “where has Paulton been? What became of Whichelo, and of Henderson? I met Whichelo for the first time in my life, just after you had left Houghton so mysteriously. Yet you say you have known him all these years.”
“Whichelo joined his brother in Mexico City, and remained there for many years,” he replied. “Paulton and Henderson continued their clever work of money-making, though mostly in Rome, and in Barcelona, where they had a number of accomplices. And I was bled—blackmailed by Paulton to the extent of nearly all my fortune—month after month, year after year. My wife, as you know, has her own fortune, and there were reasons why he could not touch that without incriminating himself, so for years I have had to live almost entirely on her means. Some years ago, Paulton and Henderson were both arrested in Paris on a charge of forgery of Russian bank-notes. They were tried, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. At the end of seven years, they were released. Paulton returned to England, and began once more to blackmail me. Worse, he had seen Vera, and at once told me he should marry her. If I refused my consent he would, he declared—”
The poor fellow who had once bought a knighthood, stopped, gasping for breath. I laid my hand upon his arm, as I thought to soothe him, but he pushed it off quite roughly.
“Some months ago he sent me an ultimatum. If I still refused to let my girl marry him, he—would call before the last day of—March—and—”
“Yes? Yes?” I exclaimed, unable now to restrain my curiosity.
“He declared he would disclose all he knew, take Vera from me by a plan that he explained, and that I saw I could not frustrate, and encompass the death of any persons to whom he thought I might have revealed the secret concerning him. Also he would tell the police the truth about the murder of his half-brother. He believed that you and I being such intimate friends, I had told you about him. Also he believed, for some reason, that my butler, James, knew something. He said he would kill you both. One of his accomplices was Judith, whom, a year ago, Gwen unsuspectingly engaged as maid. She, it seems, had kept Paulton posted in all that was happening in Houghton. I was driven to my wits’ ends—entirely desperate—though—you—you never suspected it.”
“But the photograph,” I exclaimed, as I noticed a curious change suddenly come over him, “that photograph of Paulton—why was it at Houghton?”