“That, Mr. Garson, I want to be excused from telling.”
“Excused from telling! Why, man, it may help to elucidate the mystery of Mr. Hemmingway’s death!”
“Oh, I hope not, I hope not!” said Fiske, so earnestly that both Bayliss and the Inspector looked at him in surprise.
“You _do_ know something,” said Mr. Garson quickly, “that may have a bearing on the mystery, and I must insist that you tell it.”
“It is because it may _seem_ to have a bearing that I hesitate,” said Mr. Fiske gravely. “But, to put it boldly, as I told you I am not fluent under stress of excitement; in a word, then, Mr. Hemmingway implied to me, that—that he had a half-defined fear that sometime his life might—might end suddenly.”
“In the way it did?”
“Yes, in that way. He feared that some one desired his death, and that was the reason he asked me to care for his will and his valuable securities for a few days.”
“Why were these things not in a safety deposit vault?” asked Bert Bayliss.
“They have been; but a few days ago Mr. Hemmingway had them brought home to make some records and changes, and as it was Saturday he could not send them back then, so he gave them to me. I have a small safe at home, and of course I was willing to keep them for him.”
“Then Mr. Hemmingway feared both robbery and murder,” said Bayliss, and Mr. Fiske shuddered at this cold-blooded way of putting it.