“Not until today,” replied Ransford promptly.  “Never had the ghost of a notion of it!  If I only had known—­but, I hadn’t!  However, to go back—­this man Wraye, who appears always to have been a perfect master of plausibility, able to twist people round his little finger, somehow got into close touch with your father about financial matters.  Wraye was at that time a sort of financial agent in London, engaging in various doings which, I should imagine, were in the nature of gambles.  He was assisted in these by a man who was either a partner with him or a very confidential clerk or agent, one Flood, who is identical with the man you have known lately as Fladgate, the verger.  Between them, these two appear to have cajoled or persuaded your father at times to do very foolish and injudicious things which were, to put it briefly and plainly, the lendings of various sums of money as short loans for their transactions.  For some time they invariably kept their word to him, and the advances were always repaid promptly.  But eventually, when they had borrowed from him a considerable sum—­some thousands of pounds—­for a deal which was to be carried through within a couple of days, they decamped with the money, and completely disappeared, leaving your father to bear the consequences.  You may easily understand what followed.  The money which Brake had lent them was the bank’s money.  The bank unexpectedly came down on him for his balance, the whole thing was found out, and he was prosecuted.  He had no defence—­he was, of course, technically guilty—­and he was sent to penal servitude.”

Ransford had dreaded the telling of this but Mary made no sign, and Dick only rapped out a sharp question.

“He hadn’t meant to rob the bank for himself, anyway, had he?” he asked.

“No, no! not at all!” replied Ransford hastily.  “It was a bad error of judgment on his part, Dick, but he—­he’d relied on these men, more particularly on Wraye, who’d been the leading spirit.  Well, that was your father’s sad fate.  Now we come to what happened to your mother and yourselves.  Just before your father’s arrest, when he knew that all was lost, and that he was helpless, he sent hurriedly for me and told me everything in your mother’s presence.  He begged me to get her and you two children right away at once.  She was against it; he insisted.  I took you all to a quiet place in the country, where your mother assumed her maiden name.  There, within a year, she died.  She wasn’t a strong woman at any time.  After that—­well, you both know pretty well what has been the run of things since you began to know anything.  We’ll leave that, it’s nothing to do with the story.  I want to go back to your father.  I saw him after his conviction.  When I had satisfied him that you and your mother were safe, he begged me to do my best to find the two men who had ruined him.  I began that search at once.  But there was not a trace of them—­they