'In the top right-hand drawer of the dressing-table you will find Mr. Calverley's bunch of keys,' said the widow. 'One of them opens his office desk. If you will give me my blotting-book I will write a few lines to Mr. Jeffreys, authorising you to have access to the room. Once there, you will know what to look for.'
An hour afterwards Pauline walked into the offices at Mincing-lane. Signs of mourning were there in the long strips of wood, painted black, which were stuck up in front of the windows; in the unwonted silence which reigned around, the clerks working noiselessly at their desks, and the business visitors closing the doors softly behind them, and lowering their voices as though in the presence of Death, the messengers and porters abstaining from the jokes and whistling with which they usually seasoned their work.
Pauline was shown into the little glazed room, already familiar to her, and was speedily joined by the head-clerk, to whom she handed Mrs. Calverley's note. After reading it Mr. Jeffreys hesitated, but only for an instant. From his boyhood he had been brought up by Mr. Calverley, had served him for thirty years with unswerving fidelity, and had loved him as deeply as his unsentimental business nature would permit. In his late master's lifetime no request of Mrs. Calverley's, unendorsed by her husband, would have had the smallest weight with the head-clerk. But Mr. Calverley was no longer the chief of the house; no one knew how matters would turn out, or into whose hands the business would fall; and Mr. Jeffreys had understood from Messrs. Pembertons, the lawyers, that Mrs. Calverley was appointed as executrix, and knew that it would be as well for him to secure a place in her favour. So taking a key from his pocket he requested the visitor to follow him, and ushered her up the stairs into the room on the first floor.
There it was, with the exception of the absence of the central figure, exactly as she had last seen it. There stood his desk, the
blotting-pad scribbled with recent memoranda, the date-index still showing the day on which he had last been there, the pen-rack, the paper--all the familiar objects, as though awaiting his return. Mr. Jeffreys walked to the window and pulled up the blind; then looked round the room, and in spite of himself, as it were, heaved a deep sigh.
'It is Mrs. Calverley's wish, madam, I see,' he said, referring to the letter which he held in his hand, 'that you should be left alone. If you should require any assistance or information from me, and will sound this bell,' he pointed to the spring-bell on the table, which his master had used for summoning him, and him alone, 'I shall be in the next room, and will wait upon you at once.' Then he bowed and retired.
Left to herself, and certain that the door was safely closed, Pauline took the bunch of keys from her pocket, and soon hit upon the one she required. One by one the drawers lay open before her; some almost empty, some packed to the brim, most of them with a top layer of dust, as though their contents had been undisturbed for years. What did she find in them? An assemblage of odds and ends, a collection of papers and written documents, of printed prospectuses of stock-jobbing companies, some of which had never seen the light, while others had perished in their speedily-blossomed maturity years ago. One contained a set of red-covered domestic account-books, neatly tied together with red tape, and on examining these Pauline found them to be the receipted books of the butcher, baker, &c., 'in account with Mr. John Calverley, 48 Colebrook-row, Islington,' and referring to a period when the dead man was only a struggling clerk, and lived with his old. mother in the suburbs. In another lay scores of loose sheets of paper covered with his manuscript notes and calculations, the first rough draft of his report on the affairs of Lorraine Brothers, the
stepping-stone to the position which he had afterwards occupied.
But amongst all the papers written and printed there was no allusion to the Swartmoor Ironworks, no reference to what concerned Pauline more nearly, the name of Claxton; and she was about to give up the search in despair, and to summon Mr. Jeffreys for his farewell, when in moving she touched something with her foot, something which lay in the well of the desk covered by the top and flanked on either side by the two nests of drawers. At first she thought it was a footstool, but stooping to examine it, and bringing it to the light, she found it to be a small wooden box, clamped with iron at the edges, and closed with a patent lock. The key to this lock was on the bunch in her possession; in an instant she had the box on the desk, had opened it, and was examining its contents.
'Of no value to any one but their owner.' The line which she had seen so often in the advertisement sheets of English newspapers rang in Pauline's mind as she turned over what had been So jealously guarded. A miniature portrait on ivory of an old gray-haired woman in a lace cap with long falling lappets, and a black silk dress; a folded piece of paper containing a long lock of silky white hair, and a written memorandum, 'Died April 13th, 1858;' two newspaper cuttings, one announcing the death of Mrs. Calverley, of Colebrook-row, Islington, at the date just mentioned; the other the marriage of John Calverley, Esq., with Jane, widow of the late George Gurwood, Esq., and only daughter of John Lorraine, Esq., of Mincing-lane and Brunswick-square. Then Pauline came upon a packet of letters stained and discoloured with age, which on examination proved to have been written to him by his mother at various dates, while he was absent travelling on the business of the firm.
And nothing else. That box seemed to have been used by the dead man as a sacred depository for the relics of the old woman whom he had loved with such filial tenderness, whose memory he had so fondly cherished. Stay! Here was something else, an envelope cleaner, fresher, and of newer shape than the others. She took it out and opened it eagerly. Ah, at last! It contained a half-sheet of note paper, on which were these words:
'October 4, '70. Transferred to private account two thousand pounds. To be given to T.D. at request of A.C.'