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.
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