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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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