“Let me see,” said Gonsalez suddenly.
He groped along the floor of the safe, and presently he began to feel carefully along the sides.
“Nothing here,” he said. He drew out half a dozen account books and a bundle of documents which at first glance Manfred had put aside as being personal to the owner of Rath Hall. These were lying on the floor amidst the mass of molten metal that had burnt deep holes in the carpet. Leon examined the books one by one, opening them and running his nail along the edge of the pages. The fourth, a weighty ledger, did not open so easily—did not, indeed, open at all. He carried it to the table and tried to pull back the cover.
“Now, how does this open?”
The ledger covers were of leather; to all appearance a very ordinary book, and Leon was anxious not to disturb so artistic a camouflage. Examining the edge carefully, he saw a place where the edges had been forced apart. Taking out a knife, he slipped the thin blade into the aperture. There was a click and the cover sprang up like the lid of a box.
“And this, I think, is what we are looking for,” said Gonsalez.
The interior of the book had been hollowed out, the edges being left were gummed tight, and the receptacle thus formed was packed close with brown papers; brown, except for one, which was written on a large sheet of foolscap, headed: “Bureau of the Ministry of Colonies, Lisbon.”
Barberton had superimposed upon this long document his Braille writing, and now one of the mysteries was cleared up.
“Lee said he had never received any important documents,” said Manfred, “and, of course, he hadn’t, so far as he knew. To him this was merely a sheet of paper on which Braille characters were inscribed. Read this, Leon.”
Leon scanned the letter. It was dated “July 21st, 1912,” and bore, in the lower left-hand corner, the seal of the Portuguese Colonial Office. He read it through rapidly and at the end looked up with a sigh of satisfaction.