"Please get me a newspaper!" said Sir Richard.
"A newspaper!" cried the nurse. "Nonsense! I'll do no such thing!"
"Then please see if there are some papers in an envelope lying on the writing table in my private study."
The nurse seemed puzzled. Where aristocratic patients were concerned, particularly if they were in a weakened condition, she was accustomed to accommodate them. She hesitated.
"At once!" added Sir Richard.
The nurse tiptoed out of the room, and in the course of a few moments returned.
"The butler says that Mr. Flynt's clerk, a man named Faggs, or Flaggs, or something of the sort, came back for them half an hour ago. He explained that he thought Mr. Flynt might have left some papers by mistake, and the butler supposed it was all right and let him have them. The name of your solicitors was upon the envelope."
Sir Richard stared at her stupidly. A queer feeling of horror and distrust pervaded him, the very same feeling which his first sight of the clerk had inspired in him. What could Flaggs have known of the notes? The clerk himself could not have committed the ghastly deed, since he had been under arrest at the time—but might he not have been an accomplice? Were the notes part of some terrible plot to enmesh him, Sir Richard Mortmain, in the murder? Was it a scheme of blackmail? The blood surged to his head and dimmed his eyesight. But why had Flaggs taken them away? Had he left them on the street hoping that Sir Richard would find them and bring them into the house, so that he could testify to having found them in the study? But, if so, why had he risked the possibility of their having been destroyed before he could regain them? Such a supposition was most unlikely. It must have been merely chance. The fellow had probably sneaked in simply to see what he could find. And what had he found! A shiver of terror quenched for an instant the burning of Mortmain's body. A horrible vision of himself standing outside the window of Lord Gordon Russell took shape before him. What if people should say—! He had been heard by Joyce and the clerk to express his hatred of the old man and his willingness to kill him. In addition there were the notes, overdue and about to be protested, which Flaggs had found in his study within twelve hours of Lord Russell's murder. Motive enough for any crime. Moreover, the policeman had seen him loitering there at almost the exact moment of the homicide!
These momentous facts came crashing down upon his brain with the weight of stones, numbing for an instant his exquisite torture—then reason reasserted herself. Lord Russell was dead. If circumstances seemed to point in his direction, he had only to deny that the notes had been in his possession, and certainly his word would be taken as against that of the drunken clerk of a solicitor. Moreover, the notes were obviously not in the possession of the executors. Should, by any chance, no memoranda of them remain he might never be called upon to honor them. At all events, his bankruptcy had, for the time at least, been averted. Even were their existence known, legal procedure would intervene to give him time to evolve some means of escape—perhaps, in default of aught else, a marriage of convenience. Sir Richard, in spite of the burning pain in his right arm, leaned back his head with a sensation of relief.
A soft knock came at the door and he heard the nurse's voice murmuring in low tones; then the curtain was partially raised and he recognized the figures of Sir Penniston Crisp and his young assistant.