“There is something I have to say to you about your brother, Mr. Stormont, something which I am sure will give you the greatest pain, but which it is right you should hear. But this is too public a place, and the ladies may return at any minute. Do you mind coming up to my room?” Wondering and uneasy, the banker went with him upstairs. When they were seated, the young man told him all the details with which the reader is acquainted. Jasper Stormont listened with a set and rigid face, as Lydon explained to him how his suspicions had first taken definite shape on the arrival on the scene of Zillah Mayhew, whom he had at once associated, from the two facts of the scar and the sapphire pendant, with Elise Makris; of his engagement of Grewgus to follow up the clues and the various discoveries of that zealous detective, down to the latest episode in connection with Wraysbury, and the despatch of the wire from Edwards to Howard Stormont, which clearly involved the owner of Effington Hall in the dastardly plot. “If I have not explained it as lucidly as I might have done,” were the concluding words of the long recital, “I can take you to Grewgus, if you wish it, and he will, I am sure, give you a much more coherent account than I have been able to do.” Jasper Stormont lifted his haggard face: “There is no necessity, Leonard. You would not say these things if they were not true, and I can quite understand how, even before the advent of this woman, Howard’s unnatural reticence about his business affairs had created in you a feeling of uneasiness. I had that same feeling myself.” Lydon drew a deep breath: “Ah, the same thing struck you, then?” “Yes, I was suspicious, but very far from guessing the ghastly truth. I came to the conclusion that my brother had spoken truly when he said he was a financier, but he was not engaged in the highest walks of his profession. I guessed he was concerned with enterprises which men of strict integrity would describe as shady, but that in pursuing them he kept well within the compass of the law. That he bore to a financier of high repute much the same sort of relation that a blood-sucking moneylender bears to a reputable banker.” There was a long pause before Jasper Stormont spoke again. “And now I must tell you something that would never have passed my lips but for what you have told me, and which proves that moral turpitude was engrained in the man from his early years. You know that he went to Australia? Do you know why he went?” Yes, Lydon did. He had refrained from telling Jasper a certain portion of the revelations made by the Colonial, Tom Newcombe, from a feeling of delicacy. His reply was that he knew he had got into some trouble about money, but was not aware of the precise nature of it.