“A nice revenge! It bears the mark of Black Bennett,” observed Usher.
“We had to make use of the secret passage from Bringhurst in order to enter the house, which we often did while you were absent at meals. Yet even then you got the better of us when you closed us down in the tunnel early one morning, and Purvis stumbling into the open well was nearly drowned. Then, having found nothing at the Manor, Harding turned his attention to searching at the Record Office to ascertain whether any other documents were preserved there. He found one, but it was in cipher, and utterly unintelligible. Therefore we kept a watchful eye on you, and when you came down here I was dispatched to follow you and note your movements.”
“But the murder at Kilburn—how was that accomplished, and for what reason?”
“Listen, and I will tell you,” the man responded. His tongue once loosened, he concealed nothing. His only object now seemed to save himself by the sacrifice of his friends. He quite realized that the game was up, and when, later, I gave him a few pearls from one of the chests that he might sell them and escape from the country in view of the coming revelations, he seemed to be perfectly satisfied. The fact that he was an arrant scoundrel could not be disguised, for he did not remain loyal to his friends in one single instance.
He paused for a few moments, as though hesitating to tell us the whole truth, but at last, with sudden resolution, he said: “When I advertised for information concerning the Wollertons I received several replies, all of which I investigated, but found the claims faulty—all save one. This latter came from a solicitor named Burrell, in Oundle, Northamptonshire, who, in confidence, wrote telling me that he could give information if paid for it.
“I therefore went to Oundle and had an interview with him. Twenty pounds was the sum agreed upon, and when I had paid it he produced some old papers which were in his dead father’s handwriting, and then told me a curious story—which, later, I found borne out by the records in question. What he related was briefly this: In the year 1870 Charles Wollerton—who held documentary proof that he was the lineal descendant of Clement Wollerton who commanded one of the ships of Sir Francis Drake’s fleet—was living at Weybourne, near Sheringham, in Norfolk, but, having been associated with two other men in a gigantic forgery of Turkish bonds, was convicted and sent to penal servitude. He left a wife and two children, a girl and a boy, the first aged two and the other only nine months old.
