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Page 116
Ransford had dreaded the telling of this but Mary made no
sign, and Dick only rapped out a sharp question.
"He hadn't meant to rob the bank for himself, anyway, had he?"
he asked.
"No, no! not at all!" replied Ransford hastily. "It was a
bad error of judgment on his part, Dick, but he--he'd relied
on these men, more particularly on Wraye, who'd been the
leading spirit. Well, that was your father's sad fate. Now
we come to what happened to your mother and yourselves. Just
before your father's arrest, when he knew that all was lost,
and that he was helpless, he sent hurriedly for me and told me
everything in your mother's presence. He begged me to get her
and you two children right away at once. She was against it;
he insisted. I took you all to a quiet place in the country,
where your mother assumed her maiden name. There, within a
year, she died. She wasn't a strong woman at any time. After
that--well, you both know pretty well what has been the run of
things since you began to know anything. We'll leave that,
it's nothing to do with the story. I want to go back to your
father. I saw him after his conviction. When I had satisfied
him that you and your mother were safe, he begged me to do my
best to find the two men who had ruined him. I began that
search at once. But there was not a trace of them--they had
disappeared as completely as if they were dead. I used all
sorts of means to trace them--without effect. And when at
last your father's term of imprisonment was over and I went to
see him on his release, I had to tell him that up to that
point all my efforts had been useless. I urged him to let the
thing drop, and to start life afresh. But he was determined.
Find both men, but particularly Wraye, he would! He refused
point-blank to even see his children until he had found these
men and had forced them to acknowledge their misdeeds as
regards him, for that, of course, would have cleared him to a
certain extent. And in spite of everything I could say, he
there and then went off abroad in search of them--he had got
some clue, faint and indefinite, but still there, as to
Wraye's presence in America, and he went after him. From that
time until the morning of his death here in Wrychester I never
saw him again!"
"You did see him that morning?" asked Mary.
"I saw him, of course, unexpectedly," answered Ransford. "I
had been across the Close--I came back through the south aisle
of the Cathedral. Just before I left the west porch I saw
Brake going up the stairs to the galleries. I knew him at
once. He did not see me, and I hurried home much upset.
Unfortunately, I think, Bryce came in upon me in that state of
agitation. I have reason to believe that he began to suspect
and to plot from that moment. And immediately on hearing of
Brake's death, and its circumstances, I was placed in a
terrible dilemma. For I had made up my mind never to tell you
two of your father's history until I had been able to trace
these two men and wring out of them a confession which would
have cleared him of all but the technical commission of the
crime of which he was convicted. Now I had not the least idea
that the two men were close at hand, nor that they had had any
hand in his death, and so I kept silence, and let him be
buried under the name he had taken--John Braden."
Ransford paused and looked at his two listeners as if inviting
question or comment. But neither spoke, and he went on.
"You know what happened after that," he continued. "It soon
became evident to me that sinister and secret things were
going on. There was the death of the labourer--Collishaw.
There were other matters. But even then I had no suspicion of
the real truth--the fact is, I began to have some strange
suspicions about Bryce and that old man Harker--based upon
certain evidence which I got by chance. But, all this time, I
had never ceased my investigations about Wraye and Flood, and
when the bank-manager on whom Brake had called in London was
here at the inquest, I privately told him the whole story and
invited his co-operation in a certain line which I was then
following. That line suddenly ran up against the man Flood
--otherwise Fladgate. It was not until this very week,
however, that my agents definitely discovered Fladgate to be
Flood, and that--through the investigations about Flood
--Folliot was found to be Wraye. Today, in London, where I
met old Harker at the bank at which Brake had lodged the money
he had brought from Australia, the whole thing was made clear
by the last agent of mine who has had the searching in hand.
And it shows how men may easily disappear from a certain round
of life, and turn up in another years after! When those two
men cheated your father out of that money, they disappeared
and separated--each, no doubt, with his share. Flood went off
to some obscure place in the North of England; Wraye went over
to America. He evidently made a fortune there; knocked about
the world for awhile; changed his name to Folliot, and under
that name married a wealthy widow, and settled down here in
Wrychester to grow roses! How and where he came across Flood
again is not exactly clear, but we knew that a few years ago
Flood was in London, in very poor circumstances, and the
probability is that it was then when the two men met again.
What we do know is that Folliot, as an influential man here,
got Flood the post which he has held, and that things
have resulted as they have. And that's all!--all that I need
tell you at present. There are details, but they're of no
importance."
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