“And all the time—as likely as not—he was a hot ’un at home, eh?”
“May have been, for all I know; but I never heard a whisper of that kind of thing about him. He wasn’t a Wesleyan or a class leader or any other advertised kind of humbug. He would play cards at the club. I’ve seen him at Ascot and Good-wood. He was a great first-nighter, and all that sounds pretty decent and ordinary.”
“Have you asked his partners if he had any private clients?”
“Yes, I did. They know of none. As far as they are aware, all the business he did went through the office in the regular way. Occasionally he would press-copy a letter himself in a private letter-book he kept. But Baxter has been through that, and he says there is nothing suspicious in it and nothing the other partners didn’t know about.”
“Then why did he keep the letter-book private?”
“Baxter told me that the letters certainly were private—the sort of letters you wouldn’t let the office boy see, but nothing more than that.”
“I’d like to see that book, Tempest.”
“So should I. But in the face of what Baxter says, I hardly see how we could press the point. We mustn’t let them get the idea that we are merely curious, or they will all just shut up like oysters. Still, Baxter isn’t a fool; and if he says it wouldn’t help us, the probabilities certainly are that he is right. To sum it all up, Yardley, you’ve got the mystery of the death of Sir John, the mystery of the secret trust, and the mystery of the death of Miss Stableford, and I am convinced that all the lot are really only one mystery. But all the same, we haven’t got the explanation of that mystery.”
Some days later, Arthur Baxter came round to Tempest’s chambers.
“I haven’t any idea,” he said, “whether there is anything in it or not, but you asked me about Sir John’s private letter-book. Yesterday I found a letter had been copied in it which I had never previously noticed; and as I can’t explain it, and as neither of my partners know or can even guess to what it refers, we three have all come to the conclusion that you had better be told about it, in case there may be any clue to be got from it.”