The Riddle of the Spinning WheelHanshew, Thomas W.
General
The Riddle of the Spinning Wheel
Hanshew, Thomas W.
Cleek, Hamilton (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
"He was just about to alter the will, was he? Well, if that were so, the
will should be here now--and it isn't," he said to himself, with
suddenly upflung brows. "Queer thing! Unless someone put it away. I'll
try the drawers. There should be no secrets from a detective, my poor
misguided friend, and if the drawers don't answer to my fingers, I'm
going to search your pockets for the key--though to steal from the dead
is a ghoulish business at the best of times.... Hello, hello! Locked, of
course! Brrrh! I don't fancy the task at all, but I mean to have my
little look-in before any of the other members of the family get
downstairs for their breakfast. So here goes."
Still mentally talking to himself, Cleek went over to the Thing that had
once been Sir Andrew Duggan, and plunged his hands in the trousers'
pockets without more ado. A bunch of keys rewarded the search. He ran
them over adroitly in his fingers; chose one which he thought would fit
the lock of the drawers, found it didn't fit, chose another, and this
time was more successful. For the top left-hand drawer of that
handsomely carved desk slid noiselessly open for him, stopped
automatically, and gave a funny little click. In a moment he had slid
down on his knees beside that gruesome figure which so impeded his
progress, and slipped his fingers up under the drawer (which was half
full of papers and so allowed him to do so), touched something which
felt like a button, and _was_ a button. Then the drawer came forward in
his hand, and revealed at back of it another one, which at a touch of
that button had dropped its front panel so that it formed a pigeon-hole.
As he peered into the recesses of this, he saw a bundle of yellowed
papers tied about with a faded piece of pink ribbon, and immediately
drew them forth into the light.
"Whew! What a beastly dust! Well, I've met this kind of a desk before,
so fortunately you're no closed book to me, my friend," he apostrophized
it, as a powder of dust flew over his fingers as he touched the packet.
"Here's something which wants looking into, so I'll appropriate it now,
and have a squint at it later. Secretive old chap he was, then! With his
secret drawers and all! Looks like a bundle of old love-letters to all
intents and purposes, but written on paper that one would hardly have
called suitable for such tender epistles. Commonest kind of
note-paper--village note-paper." He drew a sheet from the packet and
held it up to the light. "And with a water-mark of a crown and
anchor.... Hello! bit of an illiterate lady, wasn't she, who penned
these lines! For the spelling's pretty shaky. And signed _Jeannette_....
H'm. Some pretty little amour which has held such savour as to be
preserved in this form until after death--poor old fellow! Well, I'll
look into it later. Couldn't have been from the first Lady Duggan, for
_her_ name was Edith. Miss Duggan herself told me that. And ...
Jeannette! Now, I wonder...."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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