Young Blood. Hornung Ernest William
said he was!"
"I said your mother was."
"Where is my father, then?"
"On the Continent – we think."
"You think? And the – ten thousand pounds?"
"He has it with him," said Lowndes, in a low voice. "I'm sorry to say he – bolted with the lot!"
CHAPTER III
THE SIN OF THE FATHER
"It's a lie!"
The word flew through Harry's teeth as in another century his sword might have flown from its sheath; and so blind was he with rage and horror that he scarcely appreciated its effect on Gordon Lowndes. Never was gross insult more mildly taken. The elder man did certainly change colour for an instant; in another he had turned away with a shrug, and in yet another he was round again with a sad half-smile. Harry glared at him in a growing terror. He saw that he was forgiven; a blow had disconcerted him less.
"I expected you to jump down my throat," observed Lowndes, with a certain twitching of the sharp nose which came and went with the intermittent twinkle in his eyes.
"It is lucky you are not a younger man, or you would have got even more than you expected!"
"For telling you the truth? Well, well, I admire your spirit, Ringrose."
"It is not the truth," said Harry doggedly, his chest heaving, and a cold sweat starting from his skin.
"I wish to God it were not!"
"You mean to tell me my father absconded?"
"That is the word I should have used."
"With ten thousand pounds that did not belong to him?"
"Not exactly that; the money was lent to him, but for another purpose. He has misapplied rather than misappropriated it."
Harry felt his head swimming. Disaster he might bear – but disaster rooted in disgrace! He gazed in mute misery upon the stripped but still familiar room; he breathed hard, and the stale odour of his father's cheroots became a sudden agony in his dilated nostrils. Something told him that what he had heard was true. That did not make it easier to believe – on the bare word of a perfect stranger.
"Proofs!" he gasped. "What proofs have you? Have you any?"
Lowndes produced a pocket-book and extracted a number of newspaper cuttings.
"Yes," sighed he, "I have almost everything that has appeared about it in the papers. It will be cruel reading for you, Ringrose; but you may take it better so than from anybody's lips. The accounts in the local press – the creditors' meetings and so forth – are, however, rather long. Hadn't you better wait until we're on our way back to town?"
"Wait? No, show me something now! I apologise for what I said; I made use of an unpardonable word; but – I don't believe it yet!"
"Here, then," said Lowndes, "if you insist. Here's a single short paragraph from the P.M.G. It would appear about the last day in March."
"The day I sailed!" groaned Harry. He took the cutting and read as follows: —
The Press Association states that nothing further has been ascertained with regard to the whereabouts of Mr. Henry J. Ringrose, the Westmoreland ironmaster, who was last seen on Easter Eve. He has been traced, however, as already reported in these columns, to the Café; Suisse in Dieppe, though no further. The people at the café; persist in stating that their visitor only remained a few hours, so that he would appear to have walked thence into thin air. The police, as usual, are extremely reticent; but inquiry at Scotland Yard has elicited the fact that considerable doubt exists as to whether the missing man's chief creditors will, or can, owing to the character of their claim, take further action in the matter.
"Who are the chief creditors?" asked Harry, returning the cutting with an ashy face.
"Four business friends of your father's, from whom I raised the money in his name."
"Here in the neighbourhood?"
"No, in London; they advanced two thousand five hundred each."
"It was no good, you say?"
"No; the bank was not satisfied."
"So my father ran away with their money and left the works to go to blazes – and my mother to starve?"
Lowndes shrugged his shoulders.
"I apologise again for insulting you, Mr. Lowndes," said the boy, holding out his hand. "You have been a good friend to my poor father, I can see, and I know that you firmly believe what you say. But I never will! No; not if all his friends, and every newspaper in the kingdom, told me it was true!"
"Then what are you to believe?"
"That there has been foul play!"
The elder man turned away with another shrug, and it was some moments before Harry saw his face; when he did it was grave and sympathetic as before, and exhibited no trace of the irritation which it had cost an apparent effort to suppress.
"I am not surprised at that entering your head, Ringrose."
"Has it never entered yours?"
"Everything has; but one weeds out the impossibilities."
"Why is it impossible?" Harry burst out. "It is a good deal likelier than that my father would have done what it's said he did! There's an impossibility, if you like; and you would say so, too, if you had known him better."
Mr. Lowndes shook his head, and smiled sadly as he watched the boy's flaming face through his spectacles.
"You may have known your father, Ringrose, but you don't know human nature, or you wouldn't talk like that. Nothing is impossible – no crime – not even to the best of us – when the strain becomes more than we can bear. It is a pure question of strain and strength: which is the greater of the two. Every man has his breaking-point; your father was at his for years; it's a mystery to me how he held out so long. You must look at it sensibly, Ringrose. No thinking man will blame him, for the simple reason that every man who thinks knows very well that he might have done the same thing himself under the same pressure. Besides – give him a chance! With ten thousand pounds in his pocket – "
"You're sure he had it in his pocket?" interrupted Harry. These arguments only galled his wounds.
"Or else in a bag; it comes to the same thing."
"In what shape would he have the money?"
"Big notes and some gold."
"Yet foul play's an impossibility!"
"The numbers of the notes are known. Not one of them has turned up."
"I care nothing about that," cried the boy wildly, "though it shows he hasn't spent them himself. Listen to me, Mr. Lowndes. I believe my father is dead, I believe he has been murdered: and I would rather that than what you say! But you claim to have been his friend? You raised this money for him? Very well; take my hand – here in his room – where I can see him now, all the time I'm talking to you – and swear that you will help me to clear this mystery up! We'll inspan the best detective in town, and take him with us to Dieppe, and never leave him till we get at the truth. I mean to live for nothing else. Swear that you will help me … swear it here … in his own room."
The wild voice had come down to a broken whisper. Next moment it had risen again: the man hesitated.
"Swear it! Swear it! Or you may have been my father's friend, but you are none from this hour to my mother and me."
Lowndes spread his hands in an indulgent gesture.
"Very well! I swear to help you to clear up this – mystery – as long as you think it is one."
"That is all I want. Now tell me when the next train starts for town. It used to be nine-twenty?"
"It is still."
"You are returning to London yourself?"
"Yes, by that train."
"Then