“It will be over there on her desk by the door, I think,” said Kalon, with that massive innocence of manner that seemed to acquit him wholly. “She told me specially she would write it this morning, and I actually saw her writing as I went up in the lift to my own room.”
“Was her door open then?” asked the priest, with his eye on the corner of the matting.
“Yes,” said Kalon calmly.
“Ah! it has been open ever since,” said the other, and resumed his silent study of the mat.
“There is a paper over here,” said the grim Miss Joan, in a somewhat singular voice. She had passed over to her sister’s desk by the doorway, and was holding a sheet of blue foolscap in her hand. There was a sour smile on her face that seemed unfit for such a scene or occasion, and Flambeau looked at her with a darkening brow.
Kalon the prophet stood away from the paper with that loyal unconsciousness that had carried him through. But Flambeau took it out of the lady’s hand, and read it with the utmost amazement. It did, indeed, begin in the formal manner of a will, but after the words “I give and bequeath all of which I die possessed” the writing abruptly stopped with a set of scratches, and there was no trace of the name of any legatee. Flambeau, in wonder, handed this truncated testament to his clerical friend, who glanced at it and silently gave it to the priest of the sun.
An instant afterwards that pontiff, in his splendid sweeping draperies, had crossed the room in two great strides, and was towering over Joan Stacey, his blue eyes standing from his head.
“What monkey tricks have you been playing here?” he cried. “That’s not all Pauline wrote.”
They were startled to hear him speak in quite a new voice, with a Yankee shrillness in it; all his grandeur and good English had fallen from him like a cloak.
“That is the only thing on her desk,” said Joan, and confronted him steadily with the same smile of evil favour.