“A letter must have come for Mrs. Erskine late last night. I found it in the letter-box.” Watts handed it to his superior.
“Any sound from in there?” asked Pointer rather tensely.
Watts shook his head, and, receiving no answer to their knock, they entered.
She was quite dead. Gone by the same way that she had sent Robert Erskine out of life. They 'phoned for a doctor, though there was no slightest chance of rousing her to life. Then Pointer glanced at the letter he held. It was from Russell and Son. He broke the seal and read:
“Dear Mrs. Erskine,
I will reply to your last at full length to-morrow. This is simply to ask you to let me have all possible details as to the death of your one-time companion, Janet Fraser. Place of burial, doctor who attended her, etc. A relative of hers has died in Australia, and as next-of-kin she—had she lived—would have inherited his enormous fortune, which will now go to his more distant kin.
I note in your letter that your press for the sale of your Bell shares, against which we most strongly counsel you——”
Pointer put the letter down for a moment, and looked thoughtfully at the dead woman before him.
Transcriber’s Note
This transcription follows the text of the edition published by A. L. Burt Company in March, 1925, by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf. However, the following errors have been corrected from the original text:
- “concide” was changed to “coincide” (Chapter IX).
- “apolgised” was changed to “apologised” (Chapter IX).
- “Negreso” was changed to “Negresco” (Chapter X).
- Twelve occurrences of unpaired quotation marks have been fixed.