And once more, this awful clue of the dead man's pocket-book! Those
accursed notes! That hateful sum of money! How could Guy venture
to speak of it all in such terms as those--the one palpable fact
that indubitably linked him with that cold-blooded murder. "The
three thousand sent herewith I recovered, almost by a miracle, from
that false creature's grasp, under extraordinary circumstances,
and I return them now, in proof of the fact, in Montague Nevitt's
own pocket-book, which I'm sure you'll recognise as soon as you
look at it."
Cyril saw it all now beyond the shadow of a doubt. He reconstructed
the whole sad tale. He was sure he understood it. But to understand
it was hardly even yet to believe it. Guy had lost heavily in the
Rio Negro Mines, as the prosecution declared; in an evil hour he'd
been cajoled into forging Cyril's name for six thousand. Montague
Nevitt had in some way misappropriated the stolen sum. Guy had
pursued him in a sudden white-heat of fury, had come up with him
unawares, had killed him in his rage, and now calmly returned as
much as he could recover of that fateful and twice-stolen money to
Cyril. It was all too horrible, but all too true. In a wild ferment
of remorse for his brother's sin, the unhappy painter sat down at
once and penned a letter of abject self-humiliation to Elma Clifford.
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