“It is a long story,” the clerk answered, calmly.
Letheringcourt broke loose. Nothing but the sense of his own great strength and the other man’s fail physique prevented his taking him by the throat and shaking the words from his lips.
“Long or short,” he cried, “I must have it! Do you know what you have done? For the last ten years I have spent something like fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds a year, believing honestly that I was living within my income. I saved not a penny. Why should I? I knew nothing of the business myself. I have no idea how to do even a clerk’s work. What am I to do? What am I to say to my wife?”
Ambrose Weare rose slowly to his feet. There was something almost spectral-like about his long, grey figure as he stood there, leaning slightly forward, his manner unruffled, his tone still calm and even.
“You have no wife!” he said.
Letheringcourt stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. After all, perhaps this was the explanation.
“You’re mad!” he exclaimed—“mad or drunk, Weare! What is the matter with you, man? Has your mind given way?”
“I am sane enough,” Ambrose Weare answered. “Better pray that you remain so. I repeat—you have no wife.”
There was the sound of a trailing skirt. The door was softly opened. Joan Letheringcourt, humming a light tune, came in.
“Philip,” she said, “have you nearly finished your talk? Shall I be in the way? I am tired of being alone.”
“Yes, come in!” Letheringcourt answered. “Come here, Joan. Now tell me, Ambrose Weare,” he added, pointing to his wife, who was crossing the room toward the two men, “who is that lady if she is not my wife?”
“She is mine!” Ambrose Weare answered, calmly.
Letheringcourt took him by the shoulders, lifted him up, and finding him as helpless as a baby flung him back into his chair. His wife ran forward with a little scream.
“Philip!” she cried. “Philip! What is the meaning of this? Who is this person? Why does he say these things?”
“God knows!” Letheringcourt answered. “For fifteen years he has called himself Ambrose Weare. If all that he has told me is true, I should say that he is the very Devil himself! Look at him, Joan. Have you seen him before?”
She bent forward, scanning his features eagerly. Ambrose Weare was pale and breathless, but he had strength enough left to rise to his feet. There was still no colour in his cheeks, no sign of emotion save the breath which came in little pants through his clenched teeth.
“Let her look!” he said. “Let her look! Perhaps she will understand.”
There was an instant’s breathless silence. Then her eyes seemed to be lit with a sudden, strange fear. She staggered back, holding her hands in front of her face as though to shut out some awful sight. She, too, was pale now. She, too, had the air of one who looks upon terrible things.
“No!” she cried. “No; it can’t—it couldn’t be!”
“Madam,” Ambrose Weare said, “The impossible has happened. You have believed what you wished to believe—that the Nicholas Seton who died at St. Thomas’s Hospital sixteen years ago was the man to whom you had been married. It was not so. I am Nicholas Seton, and, whatever you may call yourself, you are still my wife.”
She shrank away to a corner of the sofa and sat there, sobbing quietly, pale, stricken, absolutely dazed. All the time she was muttering to herself. All the time she kept her back to the man who had told her this terrible thing.
Letheringcourt staggered toward the side-board and poured himself out some brandy. Then he came back and stood by the table, looking down upon the other man.
“Come,” he said, “let us understand this matter. You are the Ambrose Weare who came to my firm as a cashier fifteen years ago whilst I was at college. My father trusted you implicitly; my uncle trusted you. When they were dead and I came into the business I found you all-powerful. There wasn’t a clerk or a manager in the place who didn’t speak of you with respect. I have believed in you—I have believed in the figures you have shown me; I have thought myself always a rich man. Now you sit there and tell me that your connection from the first with the firm has been one long tissue of lies and deceit. Why? What is the meaning of it all? Why has it pleased you to keep silent—to drive me on towards ruin?”
The man turned half round and pointed towards the woman who sat still upon the sofa. He pointed with long, trembling forefinger; but he said nothing.
“I have done you no harm,” Letheringcourt cried.
“She was my wife,” Ambrose Weare answered.
Letheringcourt was a strong man, and he kept sane.
“Even if this horrible thing were true,” he said, “why should you seek to revenge yourself upon me? You deserted her. She had every reason to believe that you were dead. When I first knew her she told me of her former marriage. She honestly believed you dead.”
“It is a lie!” Ambrose Weare said, slowly. “She saw luxury, and she stretched out her hand to grasp it. She took her risks. Things have gone her way for a good many years. I wrote to her. I told her that I would return when I had earned enough to keep her and the child in comfort. Her father hated me because I was poor. He allowed them enough to live on so long as I was out of the way.”
“I had no letter,” she sobbed. “If it came, my father destroyed it. He swore always that you had ruined my life—you knew that.”
“So it is for these fancied wrongs that you have set yourself to ruin me!” Letheringcourt said, bitterly. “Well, there shall be a reckoning yet. If my money has gone as you say, where is it?”
“Safe,” Ambrose Weare muttered, “in Paris, in Frankfort, in New York—a thousand or so here, a thousand or so there. For twelve years I have stripped the business. There is little enough now left for anyone except the bones. She left me once because I was poor,” he cried, pointing to the woman who sat shivering upon the sofa. “To-day I am rich, if I choose, and you are a beggar!”
Letheringcourt laughed harshly. He touched the telephone which stood on the table by his side.
“Do you imagine,” he said, “that I shall let you go scot-free? Do you imagine that I shall ever let you leave this room?”
“It makes no difference,” the clerk answered. “I tell you to your face that I have robbed you, but I am the only one who knows. There are no books, no papers to prove it. On the contrary, there are bundles of accounts in the safe which I shall swear have been submitted to you year by year, and which show a steady loss. Those which it has been necessary to destroy I shall swear that you destroyed. You know you told me not long ago that I was the Napoleon of figures. It is true. I have used them like soldiers, and they have won my battle!”
Some new thing seemed to have come into Letheringcourt’s face. Those of his friends who had known him for the last ten years might almost have failed to have recognised him now. At heart he was a man. He stood looking down at the thin, frail figure at the table with a curiosity almost impersonal.
“I wonder,” he said, grimly, “that I can stand here and listen to you. I wonder I don’t shake the life from your miserable bones. In all the world there cannot breathe a creature so despicable as you! You deserted your wife—you let her believe that you were dead,” he added, pointing to the figure upon the sofa. “What kind of a creature can you be to bear an eternal grudge against me because I have tried to make her happy?”
“There was