"My first thought was to rush to the old man at once and tell him what I had discovered. But a moment's reflection convinced me that I hadn't an atom of tangible proof, that the whole thing would rest on my word, which, under the circumstances, I could hardly expect anyone to accept. No, there was nothing for it but to acquiesce in the inevitable and go--which I did."
"Yes," said Vayne thoughtfully, "you came up to my office one morning early. There was a look in your face that I shan't forget as long as I live. It has often puzzled me since why you came to me."
"I don't quite know, myself," answered Calamity. "But you had always been pretty decent to me, Vayne, and when I was acting the fool at Oxford, you befriended me more than once. Why a staid and eminently respectable family lawyer like yourself should lend a helping hand to a scatter-brained idiot I don't know; but you did, and there it is."
"As to that, my dear John, your family have been clients of my firm for generations," said the lawyer almost apologetically.
"I'm afraid that's a very weak defence, Vayne, not to say irrelevant. However, we'll let it pass. You lent me the money to get out of the country and--well, you know the rest."
"I know as much as you told me in one scanty letter a year," answered the lawyer drily. "I don't believe you would even have written me to that extent had I not extracted the promise from you before you left my office."
"I'm afraid you wouldn't have been very edified had I given you a full and particular account of my adventures. I served three years before the mast, got my mate's ticket, and after that a master's ticket. I've sailed in whalers, colliers, cattle-boats, liners, tramps, blackbirders, and God knows what sort of craft. I've dug for gold in Alaska, been a transport rider in South Africa, skippered a pearling-ground poacher in Japanese waters, run guns in the Persian Gulf, and--well, ended up by becoming a privateer. Also, I nearly pegged out once with malaria, and, as you see, I lost an eye."
"Your father, as I informed you in one of my yearly letters, died in the belief that you were dead, and so did your brother," he said. "Seeing that they are both gone, I suggest that you do not attempt to reopen the matter of the forged cheque. As you have said, you can prove nothing, and----"