He stopped for a moment. Westray said nothing, being surprised at this momentary softening of the other’s mood.
“Yes, it’s sad enough,” the organist resumed; “all these papers are nebuly coat—the sea-green and silver.”
“He was quite mad, I suppose?” Westray said.
“Everyone except me will tell you so,” replied the organist; “but I’m not so very sure after all that there wasn’t a good deal more in it than madness. That’s all that I can say just now, but those of us who live will see. There is a queer tradition hereabout. I don’t know how long ago it started, but people say that there is some mystery about the Blandamer descent, and that those in possession have no right to what they hold. But there is something else. Many have tried to solve the riddle, and some, you may depend, have been very hot on the track. But just as they come to the touch, something takes them off; that’s what happened to Martin. I saw him the very day he died. ‘Sharnall,’ he said to me, ‘if I can last out forty-eight hours more, you may take off your hat to me, and say “My lord.”’
“But the nebuly coat was too much for him; he had to die. So don’t you be surprised if I pop off the hooks some of these fine days; if I don’t, I’m going to get to the bottom, and you will see some changes here before so very long.”
He sat down at the table, and made a show for a minute of looking at the papers.
“Poor Martin!” he said, and got up again, opened the cupboard, and took out the bottle. “You’ll have a drop,” he asked Westray, “won’t you?”
“No, thanks, not I,” Westray said, with something as near contempt as his thin voice was capable of expressing.
“Just a drop—do! I must have just a drop myself; I find it a great strain working at these papers; there may be more at stake in the reading than I care to think of.”
He poured out half a tumbler of spirit. Westray hesitated for a moment, and then his conscience and an early puritan training forced him to speak.