in time for the resumption of my scholastic duties, and my few
minutes of reckless folly would, perhaps, have proved my ruin.
As it is, I am entangled in a tissue of lies and evasions, of the most
complicated sort, to account for my sunburnt appearance and my
whereabouts. I have rather carelessly told two or three different
stories, not realising the trouble this would mean for me in the end.
The truth I dare not tell. I have consulted a number of law-books
in the British Museum, and there is not the slightest doubt that
I have connived at and abetted and aided a felony. That scoundrel
Bingham was the Hithergate bank manager, I find, and guilty of
the most flagrant embezzlement. Please, please burn this letter
when read--I trust you implicitly. The worst of it is, neither my aunt
nor her friend who kept the boarding-house at which I was staying
seem altogether to believe a guarded statement I have made them
practically of what actually happened. They suspect me of some
discreditable adventure, but what sort of discreditable adventure
they suspect me of, I do not know. My aunt says she would forgive me
if I told her everything. I have--I have told her MORE than everything,
and still she is not satisfied. It would never do to let them know
the truth of the case, of course, and so I represent myself as having
been waylaid and gagged upon the beach. My aunt wants to know
WHY they waylaid and gagged me, why they took me away in their yacht.
I do not know. Can you suggest any reason? I can think of nothing.
If, when you wrote, you could write on TWO sheets so that I could
show her one, and on that one if you could show clearly that I really
WAS in Jamaica this summer, and had come there by being removed
from a ship, it would be of great service to me. It would certainly
add to the load of my obligation to you--a load that I fear I can
never fully repay. Although if gratitude . . ." And so forth.
At the end he repeated his request for me to burn the letter.