“You don’t know how long he’d been there when you were born?”

“No.”

“Was he married when he went out there?”

“No, he wasn’t.  We do know that.  He’s told us the circumstances of his marriage, because they were romantic.  When he sailed from England to Buenos Ayres, he met on the steamer a young lady who, he said, was like himself, relationless and nearly friendless.  She was going out to Argentina as a governess.  She and my father fell in love with each other, and they were married in Buenos Ayres soon after the steamer arrived.”

“And your mother is dead?”

“My mother died before we came to England.  I was eight years old, and Jessie six, then.”

“And you came to England—­how long after that?”

“Two years.”

“So that you’ve been in England ten years.  And you know nothing whatever of your father’s past beyond what you’ve told me?”

“Nothing—­absolutely nothing.”

“Never heard him talk of—­you see, according to your account, your father was a man of getting on to forty when he went out to Argentina.  He must have had a career of some sort in this country.  Have you never heard him speak of his boyhood?  Did he never talk of old times, or that sort of thing?”

“I never remember hearing my father speak of any period antecedent to his marriage,” replied Evelyn.

“I once asked him a question about his childhood.” said Jessie.  “He answered that his early days had not been very happy ones, and that he had done his best to forget them.  So I never asked him anything again.”

“So that it really comes to this,” remarked Spargo.  “You know nothing whatever about your father, his family, his fortunes, his life, beyond what you yourselves have observed since you were able to observe?  That’s about it, isn’t it?”

“I should say that that is exactly it,” answered Evelyn.

“Just so,” said Spargo.  “And therefore, as I told your sister the other day, the public will say that your father has some dark secret behind him, and that Marbury had possession of it, and that your father killed him in order to silence him.  That isn’t my view.  I not only believe your father to be absolutely innocent, but I believe that he knows no more than a child unborn of Marbury’s murder, and I’m doing my best to find out who that murderer was.  By the by, since you’ll see all about it in tomorrow morning’s Watchman, I may as well tell you that I’ve found out who Marbury really was.  He——­”

At this moment Spargo’s door was opened and in walked Ronald Breton.  He shook his head at sight of the two sisters.

“I thought I should find you here,” he said.  “Jessie said she was coming to see you, Spargo.  I don’t know what good you can do—­I don’t see what good the most powerful newspaper in the world can do.  My God!—­everything’s about as black as ever it can be.  Mr. Aylmore—­I’ve just come away from him; his solicitor, Stratton, and I have been with him for an hour—­is obstinate as ever—­he will not tell more than he has told.  Whatever good can you do, Spargo, when he won’t speak about that knowledge of Marbury which he must have?”