CASTLES IN THE AIR
So Aaron Norman, the second-hand bookseller of Gwynne Street, was dead and buried, and, it may be said, forgotten. Sylvia and those connected with her remembered the old man and his unhappy end, but the public managed to forget all about the matter in a wonderfully short space of time. Other events took place, which interested the readers of the newspapers more, and few recalled the strange Gwynne Street crime. Many people, when they did think, said that the assassins would never be discovered, but in this they were wrong. If money could hunt down the person or persons who had so cruelly murdered Aaron Norman, his daughter and heiress was determined that money could not be better spent. And Billy Hurd, knowing all about the case and taking a profound interest in it by reason of the mystery which environed it, was selected to follow up what clues there were.
But while London was still seething with the tragedy and strangeness of the crime, Mr. Jabez Pash came to the heterogeneously-furnished sitting-room in Gwynne Street to read the will. For there was a will after all. Deborah, and Bart, who had witnessed it at the request of their master, told Mr. Pash of its existence, and he found it in one of the three safes in the cellar. It proved to be a short, curt document, such as no man in his senses would think of making when disposing of five thousand a year. Aaron was a clever business man, and Pash was professionally disgusted that he had left behind him such a loose testament.
"Why didn't he come to me and have it properly drawn up?" he asked as he stood in the cellar before the open safe with the scrap of paper in his hand.
Deborah, standing near, with her hands on her haunches, laughed heartily. "I think master believed he's spent enough money with you, sir. Lor' bless you, Mr. Pash, so long as the will's tight and fair what do it matter? Don't tell me as there's anything wrong and that my pretty won't come into her forting?"
"Oh, the will's right enough," said Pash, screwing up his cheeks; "let us go up to the sitting-room. Is Miss Sylvia there?"
"That she are, sir, and a-getting back her pretty color with Mr. Paul."
Pash looked suspiciously at the handmaiden. "Who is he?"
"Nobody to be spoke of in that lump of dirt way," retorted Deborah. "He's a gentleman who's going to marry my pretty."
"Oh, the one who had the accident! I met him, but forgot his name."