Accompanied by the lawyer and the secretary, Mrs. Bates indicated the drawer, and Lockwood opened it with his key.
There were a few papers in it but no will.
Nor could further search disclose any such document.
“Who took it?” said Mrs. Bates, blankly.
But no one could answer her. The others came thronging in, Cray’s urgent requests to keep out of the study being entirely ignored.
“I knew it,” declared Mrs. Peyton, triumphantly. “Now, I guess you won’t be so cocky, Emily Bates—you or your ‘authority!’”
Mrs. Bates looked at her. “I am the heir,” she said haughtily. “I assert that—but I cannot prove it until the will is found. It isn’t in your possession, Mr. Crimmins?”
“No; Doctor Waring preferred to keep it himself. I cannot understand its disappearance.”
“A lot of paper has been burned in this fireplace,” said Helen Peyton who was poking the ashes around.
Morton hastened to look, for it seemed to him as if everybody was stealing his thunder.