“That noise!  It’s no use deceiving me; I know what it was.  They were after him.  Tell me—­has he got away?  Has my father got away?”

CHAPTER XXVI.

BACK TO LOVE AND LIFE.

Max fell into a chair.  He stared at Dudley for a few moments before he could speak.  Dudley’s father!  The man supposed to have died years and years ago in an asylum abroad, was the person who had passed as “Mrs. Higgs!” Even before he had had time to learn any of the details of the strange story, the outlines of it were at once apparent to the mind of Max.

Here was, then, the explanation of the mysterious bond between Dudley and Mrs. Higgs; here was the meaning of his visits to Limehouse.

Dudley repeated his question before Max had recovered from the shock of his surprise.

“Yes,” said he at last, “he has got away.”

But Dudley detected some reserve in his manner, or perhaps his own suspicions were aroused.  He looked searchingly at Max, and asked abruptly: 

“Is he dead?”

Max looked at him askance.

“Yes,” he said at last.

Dudley lay back in his pillows.

“Thank God!”

And Max knew by the look of intense relief on his friend’s face that he had done right in telling him the truth.

But, indeed, Max could not guess how intense the relief was from the burden of the secret which Dudley had had to bear for so long; and undoubtedly the discovery that it was a secret no longer, that the necessity for concealment was now over, helped his recovery materially.

Max told him, as briefly as possible, the details of the occurrence; but he neither asked nor invited any more questions.

It was not until some time afterward, when Dudley had left the sick-room, that the whole of the story became known to the family.  But, in the meantime, the inquest on the body brought many facts to light.

Mrs. Edward Jacobs, the widow of the man who had been found drowned in the Thames off Limehouse some weeks before, had been, so it was discovered, the person to give information to the police against Dudley, as the suspected murderer of her husband.  She had traced to him the weekly postal orders, which she looked upon as blood-money, and she had then hung about his chambers, and on one occasion followed him to Limehouse, without, however, penetrating farther than the entrance of the wharf.

Upon the information given by her a warrant was issued against Dudley; but in searching his chambers a number of letters were found, all addressed to Dudley, which threw a new and lurid light upon the affair.  The letters were written by the father to the son, and contained the whole story of his return to England a few months before; of his anxiety to see his son; his morbid fear of being recognized and shut up as a lunatic, and his equally morbid hankering after information concerning Edward Jacobs, the man who had ruined him.