Rosanna’s child.”
“And the father?” said Brian, in a low voice.
“Was Mark Frettlby.”
“Ah!”
“And now what have you to tell me?”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing,” echoed Calton, surprised, “then this is what Rosanna Moore told you when she died?”
“Yes!”
“Then why have you made such a mystery about it?”
“You ask that?” said Fitzgerald, looking up, in surprise. “If I had told it, don’t you see what difference it would have made to Madge?”
“I’m sure I don’t,” retorted the barrister, completely mystified. “I suppose you mean Frettlby’s connection with Rosanna Moore; well, of course, it was not a very creditable thing for her to have been Frettlby’s mistress, but still—”
“His mistress?” said Fitzgerald, looking up sharply “then you don’t know all.”
“What do you mean—was she not his mistress?”
“No—his wife!” Calton sprang to his feet, and gave a cry of surprise.
“His wife!”
Fitzgerald nodded.
“Why, Mother Guttersnipe did not know this—she thought Rosanna was his mistress.”
“He kept his marriage secret,” answered Brian, “and as his wife ran away with someone else shortly afterwards, he never revealed it.”
“I understand now,” said the barrister, slowly. “For if Mark Frettlby was lawfully married to Rosanna Moore—Madge is illegitimate.”
“Yes, and she now occupies the place which Sal Rawlins—or rather Sal Frettlby ought to.”
“Poor girl,” said Calton, a little sadly. “But all this does not explain the mystery of Whyte’s murder.”
“I will tell you that,” said Fitzgerald, quickly. “When Rosanna left her husband, she ran away to England with some young fellow, and when he got tired of her she returned to the stage, and became famous as a burlesque actress, under the name of Musette. There she met Whyte, as your friend found out, and they came out here for the purpose of extorting money from Frettlby. When they arrived in Melbourne, Rosanna let Whyte do all the business, and kept herself quiet. She gave her marriage certificate to Whyte, and he had it on him the night he was murdered.”
“Then Gorby was right,” interposed Calton, eagerly. “The man to whom those papers were valuable did murder Whyte!”
“Can you doubt it? And that man was—”
“Not Mark Frettlby?” burst out Calton. “Surely not Mark Frettlby?”
Brian nodded, “Yes, Mark Frettlby.”
There was a silence for a few moments, Calton being too much startled by the revelation to say anything.
“When did you discover this?” he asked, after a pause.
“At the time you first came to see me in prison,” said Brian. “I had no suspicion till then; but when you said that Whyte was murdered for the sake of certain papers, I, knowing full well what they were and to whom they were of value—guessed immediately that Mark Frettlby had killed Whyte in order to obtain them and to keep his secret.”
“There can be no doubt of it,” said the barrister, with a sigh. “So this is the reason Frettlby wanted Madge to marry Whyte—her hand was to be the price of his silence. When he withdrew his consent, Whyte threatened him with exposure. I remember he left the house in a very excited state on the night he was murdered. Frettlby must have followed him up to town, got into the cab with him, and after killing him with chloroform, must have taken the marriage certificate from his secret pocket, and escaped.”
Brian rose to his feet, and walked rapidly up and down the room.
“Now you can understand what a hell my life has been for the last few months,” he said, “knowing that he had committed the crime; and yet I had to sit with him, eat with him, and drink with him, with the knowledge that he was a murderer, and Madge—Madge, his daughter!”
Just then a knock came to his door, and Mrs. Sampson entered with a telegram, which she handed to Brian. He tore it open as she withdrew, and glancing over it, gave a cry of horror, and let it flutter to his feet.
Calton turned rapidly on hearing his cry, and seeing him fall into a chair with a white face, snatched up the telegram and read it. When he did so, his face grew as pale and startled as Fitzgerald’s, and lifting his hand, he said solemnly—
“It is the judgment of God!”
Chapter XXX.
Nemesis
Men, according to the old Greek, “are the sport of the gods,” who, enthroned on high Olympus, put evil desires into the hearts of mortals; and when evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made by their victims to escape a relentless deity called Nemesis, who exacted a penalty for their evil deeds. It was no doubt very amusing—to the gods—but it is questionable if the men found it so. They had their revenge, however, for weary of plaguing puny mortals, who whimpered and cried when they saw they could not escape, the inevitable Nemesis turned her attention from actors to spectators, and made a clean sweep of the whole Olympian hierarchy. She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues, and after she had completed her malicious work, found that she had, vulgarly speaking, been cutting off her nose to spite her face, for she, too, became an object of derision and of disbelief, and was forced to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated the other deities. But men found out that she had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge. Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves: on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already settled by Fate. After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions. Set up any idol you please upon which to lay the blame of unhappy lives and baffled ambitions, but the true cause is to be found in men themselves. Every action, good or bad, which we do has its corresponding reward, and Mark Frettlby found it so, for the sins of his youth were now being punished in his old age. No doubt he had sinned gaily enough in that far-off time when life’s cup was still brimming with wine, and no asp hid among the roses; but Nemesis had been an unseen spectator of all his thoughtless actions, and now she came to demand her just dues. He felt somewhat as Faust must have felt when Mephistopheles suggested a visit to Hades, in repayment of those years of magic youth and magic power. So long ago it seemed since he had married Rosanna Moore, that he almost persuaded himself that it had been only a dream—a pleasant dream, with a disagreeable awakening. When she had left him he had tried to forget
