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Updated: May 16, 2025
They were "Jack" and "Elsie" to me, to their faces, before three days were out; and I was plain "Una" to them: it sounded so sweet and sisterly. Elsie slipped it out the second morning as naturally as could be. "Una'd like a cup of tea, Jack;" then as red as fire all at once, she corrected herself, and added, "I mean, Miss Callingham." "Oh, do call me Una!"
But her brother interrupted her with a somewhat graver air: "It goes deeper than that, I'm afraid, Elsie," he said, turning his eye full upon her. "If Miss Callingham feels she couldn't be happy in stopping with us, she'd better try elsewhere. Though where on earth we can put her, I haven't just now the very slightest idea. But we'll turn it over in our own minds before we reach Adolphus Town."
There I lost my identity. A crowd lounged around the platform, and surged about the Pullman car, calling to see "Una Callingham." But no Una Callingham appeared on the scene. I went, on in the same train, without a word to anyone, all unknown save to the two Cheritons, and as an unrecognised unit of common humanity. I had cast that horrid identity clean behind me. The afternoon was pleasant.
Richard Wharton understood now why Vivian Callingham had left him alone on those desert rocks, and sailed away in the ship without telling the captain of his fellow-castaway's plight. He saw the whole vile plot the man had concocted at once, and the steps he had taken to carry it into execution.
You're my father's murderer! Don't hope to escape by playing on my feelings. I'd deserve to be murdered myself, if I could act like that! I'm on my way to the police-office, to give you in custody on the charge of murdering Vivian Callingham at Woodbury!" He jumped up again, all anxiety. "Oh, no, you mustn't walk!" he cried, laying his hand upon my arm.
Vivian Callingham, whom I falsely thought my father, had gone back to Australia with pretended news of Richard Wharton's death. He had sought my widowed mother in her own home up country, and told her a lying tale of his devotion to her husband in his dying moments on that remote ocean speck in the far Southern Pacific. By this story he ingratiated himself.
I won't tell you in words, for you'd never believe it. I'll SHOW you who it was that fired the shot at Mr. Callingham." He moved over to the other side of the room, and unlocking drawer after drawer, took a bundle of photographs from the inmost secret cabinet of a desk in the corner. "There, Una," he said, selecting one of them and holding it up before my eyes. "Prepare yourself, darling.
The paragraphs told me the whole story of the crime, as far as it was known to the world, from the very beginning. First of all, in the papers, came the bald announcement that a murder had been committed in a country town in Staffordshire; and that the victim was Mr. Vivian Callingham, a gentleman of means, residing in his own house, The Grange, at Woodbury. Mr.
The moment we reached the quay at Quebec, some two days later, a dozen young men, with little notebooks in their hands, jumped on board all at once. "Miss Callingham!" they cried with one accord, making a dash for the quarter-deck. "Which is she? Oh, this! If you please, Miss Callingham, I should like to have ten minutes of your time to interview you!"
'How could she ever consent to such a wicked deception?" "Mr. Callingham had your mother completely under his thumb," Jack answered with promptitude. "She couldn't call her soul her own, your poor mother so I've heard: he cajoled her and terrified her till she didn't dare to oppose him. Poor shrinking creature, she was afraid of her life to do anything except as he bade her.
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