He, like many another successful and masterful man, had never taken death into account, or he would have destroyed many of those written witnesses against him. As it was, he had kept everything, partly from the sense of power which it gave him to do so, partly from the prudent sharpness of a business man which made him never lose a letter, however insignificant, or destroy a signature, however unneeded. She could not understand all the meaning of these papers, but she understood much: enough to make her heart sick with shame, frozen with horror. She had always known, vaguely, that his fortunes had been obtained mainly through crimes which in the successful man society has agreed to let pass as virtues; but she could now name, measure, analyze those crimes and see them in all their entity, as drops of blood are seen under a microscope. Thus she became acquainted with all the steps which had conducted him from the straw of the cattle-shed to the carpets of Harrenden House. That small study, in which he had kept locked all his ledgers, folios, banking-books, and documents of every kind, seemed like a very charnel-house to its new visitant. She had read very widely; she had thought a great deal; and to her clear and cultured intelligence the true aims and objects of her father’s life seemed as sordid and miserable as those of the ragged men whom she had seen in her childhood greedily washing river sand in tin pannikins in the hope of finding some gleam of gold, and ready to murder their bosom friend to secure a grain of the coveted metal. Among those papers was the letter written by the Suffolk emigrant for Robert Airley. She read it, and it flashed across her mind that Robert Airley had come to England and had killed her father. There was nothing to suggest it, nothing to prove it; but she had no more doubt of it than if she had heard the confession of the assassin. She telegraphed to Kerosene City to inquire where Robert Airley was. It was telegraphed back to her that he had sailed for Liverpool on the 30th of May: her father had been shot on the night of the 17th of June: she had no doubt after this that her inference had been correct. And it had not been murder, but justice! Justice red-handed and rude--the _lex talionis_, but justice nevertheless. Through suggestions from the American police, and Massarene’s manager, the same suspicions were entertained by Scotland Yard. But Robert Airley was lost sight of on his arrival in London, and, as the woman of the eating-house held her peace and kept her own counsel, he remained untraced.