"Because I go with you, never again in all likelihood to enter America. From to-day, then, you will excuse my absences. I have many affairs to settle."
Virdow heard him in silence, but presently he asked:
"Are you not satisfied now, Edward."
"I am satisfied that I am the son of Marion Evan, but I will have undoubted and unmistakable proof before I set foot in this community again! There is little chance to obtain it. Nearly thirty years—it is a long time, and the back trail is covered up."
"What are your plans?"
"To employ the best detectives the world can afford, and give them carte blanche."
"But why this search? Is it not better to rest under your belief and take life quietly? There are many new branches of science and philosophy—you have a quick mind, you are young—why not come with me and put aside the mere details of existence? There are greater truths worth knowing, Edward, than the mere truth of one's ancestry." Edward looked long and sadly into his face and shook his head.
"These mere facts," he said at length, "mean everything with me." He went to his room; there were hours of silence and then Virdow heard in the stillness of the old house the sound of Gerald's violin, for Edward's had been left in Mary's care. His philosophy could not resist the Fatherland appeal that floated down the great hall and filled the night with weird and tender melody. For the man who played worshipped as he drew the bow.
But silence came deep over Ilexhurst and Virdow slept. Not so Edward; he was to begin his great search that night. He went to the wing-room and the glass-room and flooded them with light. A thrill struck through him as he surveyed again the scene and seemed to see the wild face of his comrade pale in death upon the divan. There under that rod still pointing significantly down to the steel disk he had died. And outside in the darkness had Rita also died. He alone was left. The drama could not be long now. There was but one actor.
He searched among all the heaps of memoranda and writings upon the desk. They were memoranda and notes upon experiments and queries. Edward touched them one by one to the gas jet and saw them flame and blacken into ashes, and now nothing was left but the portfolio—and that contained but four pictures—the faces of Slippery Dick, himself and Mary and the strange scene at the church. One only was valuable—the face of the girl which he knew he had given to the artist upon the tune he had played. This one he took, and restored the others.