The Broken Thread. William Le Queux
make a minute examination of the body, but Raife did not remain. He returned to the house, accompanied by Edgson.
A few minutes later he stood in the library before the open safe, plunged in thought. The sunshine streamed across the fine old room filled with books from floor to ceiling, for Sir Henry was a student, and his library, being his hobby, was cosily furnished—a pleasant, restful place, the long, stained-glass windows of which looked out upon the quaint old Jacobean garden, with its grey, weather-beaten sundial, its level lawns, and high, well-clipped beech hedges.
Raife stood gazing at the safe, which, standing open, just as it was when his father had surprised the intruder, revealed a quantity of papers, bundles of which were tied with faded pink tape: a number of valuable securities, correspondence, insurance policies, and the usual private documentary treasures of an important landowner. Papers concerning the estate were mostly preserved at the agent’s office in Tunbridge Wells: only those concerning his own private affairs did Sir Henry keep in the library.
What had his dead father meant by those dying words uttered to old Edgson? That warning to be careful of the trap! What trap? What could his father fear? What truth was it which his father had hesitated to tell him—the important truth the telling of which had been too late.
He recollected his father’s words as uttered to the faithful old servant: “I was a fool, Edgson. I ought to have told my boy from the first. Every man has a skeleton in his cupboard. This is mine!”
“And, further, who was the woman whom he had referred to as ‘her’?”
The young man gazed upon the dark patch on the carpet near the door, soaked by the life-blood of his unfortunate father. The latter, so suddenly cut off, had carried his secret to the grave.
That big, sombre room, wherein the tragedy had taken place, looked pleasant and cheerful with the bright, summer sunlight now slanting upon it. The big, silver bowl of roses upon the side-table shed a sweet fragrance there, while the spacious, old-fashioned mahogany writing-table was still littered with the dead man’s correspondence.
The writing-chair he had vacated on the previous night, before going to bed, stood there, the silk cushion still crushed just as he had risen from it. His big briar-pipe lay just as he had knocked it out and placed it in the little bowl of beaten brass which he used as an ash-tray.
The newspapers which he had read were, as usual, flung upon the floor, while the waste-paper basket had not been emptied that morning. The servants had not dared to enter that room of disaster.
Young Raife re-crossed the room, and again examined the open door of the safe.
He saw that it had not been forced, but opened by a duplicate key—one that had, no doubt, been cut from a cast secretly taken of the one which his father always carried attached to his watch-chain. So well had the false key fitted that the door had yielded instantly.
In the darkness in that well-remembered room, the room which he recollected as his father’s den ever since he was a child, the two men—the baronet and the burglar—had come face to face.
“I wonder,” Raife exclaimed, speaking to himself softly, scarce above a whisper. “I wonder if there was a recognition? The words of the poor guv’nor almost tell me that, in that critical moment, the pair, bound together in one common secret, met. They hated each other—and they killed each other! Why did the guv’nor admit that he had been a fool? Why did he wish to warn me of a trap? What trap? Surely at my age I’m not likely to fall into any trap. No,” he added, with a bitter smile, “I fancy I’m a bit too wary to do that.”
He paced up and down the long, silent, book-lined chamber, much puzzled.
As he did so, the sweet, pale, refined face of Gilda Tempest again arose before him. He had only met her casually, a few hours ago, yet, somehow why he could not explain, they had seemed to have already become old friends and, amid all his trouble, anxiety and bewilderment, he found himself wondering how she fared, and whether the dear little black pom, Snookie, was guarding his dainty little mistress.
True, a black shadow had fallen upon his home, a tragic event which had rendered him a baronet, and in a few months he would be possessor of great estates, nevertheless that thought had not yet occurred to him. His only concern had been for his bereaved mother, to whom he was so devoted, and from whom his father had hidden his strange secret. Through that dark cloud of mourning, which had so suddenly enveloped him, arose the beautiful countenance of the girl into whose society chance had so suddenly thrown him, and he felt he must see her again, that he must stroll at her side once again, at all hazards.
As his father’s only son, he had a right to investigate the contents of the open safe, for he knew that one executor was away at Dinard, while the other, an uncle, lived in Perthshire. At present, his father’s lawyer had not been communicated with, therefore he crossed again to the safe and methodically removed paper after paper to examine it.
Most of them were securities, mortgages, bonds, and other such documents, which, at that moment, did not possess much interest for him.
One bundle of old and faded letters which he untied were in a handwriting he at once recognised—the letters of his mother before she had become Lady Remington. Another—a batch written forty years ago—were the letters from his grandfather, while his father was at Oxford. With these were other letters from dead friends and relatives; but, though he spent an hour in searching through them, Raife discovered no clue to the strange secret which Sir Henry had died without divulging.
Then he afterwards replaced the papers, closed the safe and re-locked it with the false key which still remained in it.
His mother was still too prostrated to speak with him, therefore he again went across to the cottage where the police were with the dead assassin.
As he entered, one of the detectives was carefully applying printer’s ink to the tips of the cold, stiff fingers, and afterwards taking impressions of them upon pieces of paper.
The secret of the dead thief’s identity would, they declared among themselves, very soon be known.
Chapter Four.
Reveals Certain Confidences.
“Tell him to be careful—to be wary of—the trap?”
Those dying words of Sir Henry’s rang ever in his son’s ears.
That afternoon, as Raife stood bowed in silence before the body of his beloved father, his mind was full of strange wonderings.
What was the nature of the dead man’s secret? Who was the woman to whom he had referred a few moments before he expired?
The young fellow gazed upon the grey shrunken face he had loved so well, and his eyes became dimmed by tears. Only a week before they had been in London together, and he had dined with his father at the Carlton Club, and they had afterwards gone to a theatre.
The baronet was then in the best of health and spirits. A keen sportsman, and an ardent golfer, he had been essentially an out-door man. Yet he now lay there still and dead, killed by an assassin’s bullet. Raife’s mother was inconsolable and he had decided that it was best for him to keep apart from her for the present.
To his friend, Mutimer, he had sent a wire announcing the tragic news, and had, by telephone, also informed Mr. Kellaway, the family lawyer, whose offices were in Bedford Row, London. On hearing the astounding truth, Mr. Kellaway—to whom Raife had spoken personally—had announced his intention of coming at once to Tunbridge Wells.
At six o’clock he arrived in the car which Raife had sent for him—a tall, elderly, clean-shaven man in respectful black.
“Now, Mr. Kellaway,” said Raife, when they were alone together in the library, and the young baronet had explained