“Rather like a railway chess-board, isn’t it?” he said, as he went back to his seat, “but a good deal of trouble to play a game with pieces of that weight, I should think.”
Old Rollo’s eyes twinkled.
“I doubt if they’d have played much if they’d been left to their own exertions. As a matter of fact, each player had a lackey to shift his pieces for him while he sat comfortably in his chair.”
He came forward and sat down as he spoke.
“This chess-board looks innocent enough; but it brought the death of my grandfather. You know what it was like in those days: men would quarrel about the tint of a snuff-box and fight a fatal duel over the fit of a cravat. My grandfather was as much of a fire-eater as his friends. Some miserable squabble took place in this room while they were actually playing on that board; probably a mere drunken difference of opinion about some absurd trifle or other. They went out with pistols in the dawn; and the other man was the luckier of the two. Perhaps he deserved to be. No one knows now what they fought about. My grandfather was shot in the head—killed instantly.”
Rollo Dangerfield rose, and drawing from his pocket a bunch of keys, he opened a small safe buried in the wall of the room beside the fireplace. From one of the divisions of the safe he extracted a worn-looking paper and a peculiar disc-like object.
“Here are two other relics. We preserve most things; and as this was the last document my grandfather put on paper, we’ve kept it in safety. You may as well see it.”
He handed the paper to Wraxall, who studied it intently before passing it to his neighbour. At the top of the sheet were two lines of handwriting:
Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam.
Matt VI. 21; Luke XII. 34.
Below this was a rough diagram of a chess-board with certain pieces placed as in an end-game or a problem.