William Le Queux - The Broken Thread

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.

“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 what had occurred. “You have been my father’s very intimate friend, as well as his solicitor for many years. I want to ask you a simple question. Are you aware that my father held a secret – some secret of the past?”

“Not to my knowledge, Mr Raife – or Sir Raife, as I suppose I ought to call you now,” was the sombre, and rather sad, man’s reply.

“Well, he had a secret,” exclaimed Raife, looking at him, searchingly.

“How do you know?”

“He told Edgson, the butler, before he died.”

“Told his servant his secret!” echoed the lawyer, knitting his brows.

“No. He told him something – not all.”

“What did he tell him?” asked Mr Kellaway, in quick eagerness.

“My father said he wished that he had been frank with me, and revealed the truth.”

“Of what?”

“Of his secret. He left me a message, urging me to beware of the trap. Of what nature is the pitfall?” asked the young man. “You, his friend, must know.”

“I regret, but I know absolutely nothing,” declared the solicitor, frankly. “This is all news to me. What do you think was the nature of the secret? Is it concerning money matters?”

“No. I believe it mainly concerns a woman,” the young man replied. “My father had no financial worries. He was, as you know, a rich man. Evidently he was anxious on my behalf, or he would not have given Edgson that message. Ah! If his lips could only speak again – poor, dear guv’nor.”

And the young man sighed.

“Perhaps Edgson knows something?” the solicitor suggested.

“He knows nothing. He only suspects that there is a lady concerned in it, for my father, before his death, referred to ‘her’.”

“Your respected father was my client and friend through many years,” said Mr Kellaway. “As far as I know, he had no secrets from me.”

Raife looked him straight in the face for a few moments without speaking. Like all undergraduates he had no great liking for lawyers.

“Look here, Kellaway,” he said slowly. “Are you speaking the truth?”

“The absolute truth,” was the other’s grave reply.

“Then you know of no secret of my father’s. None – eh?”

“Ah, that is quite a different question,” the solicitor said. “During the many years I have acted for your late father I have been entrusted with many of his secrets – secrets of his private affairs and suchlike matters with which a man naturally trusts his lawyer. But there was nothing out of the common concerning any of them.”

“Nothing concerning any lady?”

“Nothing – I assure you.”

“Then what do you surmise regarding ‘the trap,’ about which my father left me this inexplicable message?”

“Edgson may be romancing,” the lawyer suggested. “In every case of a sudden and tragic death, the servant, male or female, always has some curious theory concerning the affair, some gossip or some scandal concerning their employer.”

“Edgson has been in our family ever since he was a lad. He’s not romancing,” replied Raife dryly.

Mr Kellaway was a hard, level-headed, pessimistic person, who judged all men as law-breakers and criminals. He was one of those smug, old-fashioned Bedford Row solicitors, who had a dozen peers as clients, who transacted only family business, and whose firm was an eminently respectable one.

“I have always thought Edgson a most reliable servant,” he admitted, crossing to the safe, the key of which Raife had handed to him.

“So he is. And when he tells me that my father possessed a secret, which he has carried to his grave – then I believe him. I have never yet known Edgson to tell a lie. Neither has my father. He was only saying so at dinner one night three months ago.”