BOOK IV
LOVE
LI
By night the whole town rang with the extraordinary news that I have just endeavored to convey to you. I had visited Mr. Jackson at his office and had a rather serious talk with the Inspector at the Police Station while I myself had many visitors, to all of whom I excused myself with the exception of one. That one was an elderly man who had in his possession an old picture of the inn which had been incorporated in the Bartholomew mansion. He offered to show it to me. I could not resist seeing it, so I ordered him sent up to my room.
At the first glimpse I got of this picture I understood much that I had been doubtful about before. The eighteen or twenty steps we had discovered leading down from Uncle’s closet, were but the upper portion of the long flight originally running up from the ground to the large hall where entertainments had been given. The platform where we had found the box made the only break in the descent. This was on a level with the floor of the second story of the inn and from certain indications visible in this old print I judged that it acted as the threshold of a door opening into this story, just as the upper one now represented by the floor of Uncle’s closet opened into the great hall. The remaining portions of the building had been so disguised and added to by the clever architect, that only from the picture I was now studying could one see what it had originally been.
I thanked the man and seeing that for a consideration he was willing to part with this picture, made myself master of it at once, wishing to show it to Orpha.
Orpha! Would I hear from her? Was my letter to her little more than a pebble dropped into a bottomless well?
I tried not to think of her. How could I with the future rising before me an absolutely blank wall? Both the Inspector and Mr. Jackson advised me to keep very quiet—as I certainly wished to do—and make no move till the will had been offered for probate and the surrogate’s decision obtained. The complications were great; time alone would straighten them out. The murder charge not made as yet but liable to fall any day like a thunderbolt on one or the other of us—Edgar’s violent character hidden under an exterior so delightful—the embarrassing position of Orpha—all combined to make it wise for me to walk softly and leave my affairs to their sole manipulation. I was willing, but—
And instantly I became more than willing. A note was handed in. It was from Orpha and vied with mine in its simplicity.
To trust you is easy. It was because my father trusted you that he laid his great fortune in your hands.
Orpha.