“But the passing himself off as an old woman, this living in a sort of underground way, didn’t that look like madness?”

“I took it for eccentricity and nothing more, until—­until he sent for me one day, and brought me suddenly into a room—­a little dark, bare room—­where there was a man lying on the ground asleep, as I thought.  My father told me to bring him into the next room, and—­when I stooped to touch him”—­Dudley shuddered at the ghastly recollection—­“my hands were covered with blood.”

“Good gracious!  He had murdered him?”

“Yes.  And from that time he seemed a different man.  I saw that he was mad.  I tried to persuade him to give himself up, to let himself be put under restraint.  I laid traps for him, trying to take him to an asylum.  But he was too cunning for me, and all I got by it was to rouse in him a bitter feeling of hatred of myself.”

“Why didn’t you give information—­to the police, if necessary?”

“How could I?  My own father!  I believed he would be hanged if he was caught.  I believe so still.  The last time I saw him he seemed sane, except for a feeling of irritation against me and against Carrie, who, it seems, is my half-sister.  But he attacked me suddenly, knocked me on the head, and tried to drown me.  There, now you know as much as I do.  Can you wonder now that I was obliged to cut myself off from my friends, with such a burden as that on my mind?”

Mr. Wedmore was silent for a time.

“Poor lad!” he said at last.  “Poor lad!  I think you might have found some better way out of it than holding your tongue and shutting yourself up from all your friends; but, on the other hand, it was a jolly difficult position.  Jolly difficult!  And so you never even told Max?”

“No, though I more than once felt inclined to.  But it was such a ghastly business altogether that I thought I’d better hold my tongue, especially as—­I was afraid—­it might filter through him to—­to somebody else—­somebody who couldn’t be told a beastly secret like that.”

Mr. Wedmore nodded.

“And this girl—­this Carrie?” said he.

Dudley’s face lighted up.

“That’s my one comfort in all this,” said he, “that it has led to my finding out the girl and doing something for her.  I never heard of her before.  But my father told me she was my half-sister, and they say there is something in our faces which confirms the story.  Anyhow, she’s a grand girl, and I’m going to look after her.  She’s gone away—­”

“Gone away!” repeated Mr. Wedmore, disconcerted.

There had been a lull in the quarrel between him and his son for the last few days, during which Carrie had avoided Max and Max had avoided his father.

“Yes,” said Dudley.  “She would go, and she thought it best to go without any fuss, leaving me to say good-bye for her.  She’s all right.  I’m going to look after her; and she’s going into training as a hospital nurse.”