"To-morrow," Penlyn heard him say, and he started as he heard it, "I am going to make a thorough investigation of all his papers. As far as I or his City agents know, he hadn't a relation in the world; but surely his correspondence must give us some idea of whom to communicate with. And, until this morning, I should have said he had not got an enemy in the world either."
"You think, then, that this dastardly murder is the work of an enemy, and not for mere robbery?" the gentleman asked who had brought him into the club.
"I am sure of it! As to the workman who is supposed to have done it--well, if he did do it, he was only a workman in disguise. No! he had some enemy, perhaps some one who owed him money, or whose path he had been enabled by his wealth to cross, and that is the man who killed him. And, by the grace of Heaven, I am going to find that man out."
Penlyn still sat there, and as he heard Stuart utter these words he felt upon what a precipice he stood. Suppose that, in the papers which were about to be ransacked, there should be any that proved that Walter Cundall was his eldest brother, and that he, Penlyn, had only learnt it two days before he was murdered. Would not everything point to him as the Cain who had slain his brother, and was he not making appearances worse against him by keeping silence? He must tell some one, he could keep the horrible secret no longer. And he must have the sympathy of some one dear to him; he would confide in Ida! Surely, she would not believe him to be the murderer of his own brother! Yes, he would go down to Belmont and tell her all. Better it should come from him than that Stuart should discover it, and publish it to the world.
"I hope you may find him out," several men said in answer to Stuart's exclamation. "The brute deserves something worse than hanging. If Cundall's murderer gets off, it is the wickedest thing that ever happened." Then one said: "Is there any clue likely to be got at through the wound?"
"No," Stuart answered, "I think not. Though the surgeon who has examined it says that it was made by no ordinary knife or dagger."
"What does he think it was, then?" they asked.
"He says the wound is more like those he has seen in the East. The dagger, he thinks, must have been semicircular and of a kind the Arabs often use, especially the Algerian Arabs."
"I never knew that!" one said; "but then I have never been to Algiers. Who has? Here, Penlyn, you were there once, weren't you?"
"Yes," Penlyn said, and his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth as he uttered the words; "but I never saw or heard of a knife or dagger of that description."