Colonel Thorndyke's Secret

by G. A. Henty

“It seems horrid to be glad that anyone has taken his own life,” the latter said; “but I cannot help feeling so, for as long as he lived I should never have considered that you were safe, and besides, I suppose there is no doubt that if he had not killed himself he would have been hung.”

“There is not a shadow of doubt about that,” Mark replied. “We found the proceeds of a vast number of robberies at his place, and also in his pockets the money he had taken from the passengers of the Portsmouth coach an hour before we captured him. So that putting aside that Australian business altogether, his doom was sealed.”

“Now, please, tell us all about it,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “But first let us congratulate you most warmly not only on the success of your search, but that the work is at an end.”

“Yes, I am glad it is over. At first I was very much interested; in fact, I was intensely interested all along, and should have been for however long it had continued. But, at the same time, I could do nothing else, and one does not want to spend one's whole life as a detective. At last it came about almost by chance, and the only thing I have to congratulate myself upon is that my idea of the sort of place he would have taken was exactly borne out by fact.”

And Mark then gave them a full account of the manner in which the discovery had been made and the capture effected.

“You see, Millicent, I followed your injunction, and was very careful. Taking him by surprise as I did, I might have managed it single handed, but with the aid of two good men it made a certainty of it, and the whole thing was comfortably arranged.”

“I think you have done splendidly, Mark,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “It was certainly wonderful that you should have found him doing exactly what you had guessed, even down to the deaf servant. Well, now that is done and over, what do you think of doing next?”

“I have hardly thought about that,” he replied; “but, at any rate, I shall take a few weeks' holiday, and I suppose after that I shall settle down to the search for my uncle's treasure. I am afraid that will be a much longer and a vastly more difficult business than this has been. Here there were all sorts of clews to work upon. Bastow ought to have been captured months ago, but in this other affair, so far, there is next to nothing to follow up. We don't even know whether the things are in India or in England. I believe they will be found, but that it will be by an accident. Besides, I fancy that we shall hear about them when you come of age, Millicent. There was to have been no change till that time, and I cannot help thinking that Uncle George must have made some provisions by which we should get to know about them in the event of his death without his having an opportunity of telling anyone where they are.

“He might have been killed in battle; he might have been drowned on his way home. He had thought the whole matter over so thoroughly, I do think the possibilities of this could not have escaped him. As I told you, Mr. Prendergast made inquiries of all the principal bankers and Indian agents here, and altogether without success. After he had done that, I got a list of all the leading firms in Calcutta and Madras, and wrote to them, and all the replies were in the negative. It is true that does not prove anything absolutely. Eighteen years is a long time, and the chances are that during those years almost every head of a firm would have retired and come home. Such a matter would only be likely to be known to the heads; and if, as we thought likely, the box or chest was merely forwarded by a firm there to England, the transaction would not have attracted any special attention. If, upon the other hand, it remained out there it might have been put down in a cellar or store, and have been lying there ever since, altogether forgotten.”

“I don't see myself why you should bother any more about it; perhaps, as you say, it will turn up of itself when I come of age. At any rate, I should say it is certainly as well to wait till then and see if it does, especially as you acknowledge that you have no clew whatever to work on. It is only three more years, for I am eighteen next week, and it certainly seems to me that it will be very foolish to spend the next three years in searching about for a thing that may come to you without any searching at all.”