“What am I to do with it?”
“When you find the man who killed your brother, you are to give this unopened box to him. Give it to him, and when you do so, say, ‘Dr. Follett, the father of Anthony Follett, asked me to give you this.’ You need not add a word more. Keep the box until that supreme moment comes. Whatever else you part from, never let this box out of your keeping. Where you go take it, for any day or any night the need for it may arise. When you give it to the murderer and when he opens it, your brother’s blood will be avenged.”
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE BUNGALOW.
Meanwhile Adrian Rowton had gone quickly back to the Bungalow. It was a truly bare and comfortless place. He kept only one servant, the rough-looking man who has been already described. Hearing his horse’s steps on the path outside, the man, Samson by name, came out to meet his master. He was a middle aged, strongly-built, square individual; his hair, which had once been red, was now turning to a grizzly grey; it grew thick on his low forehead and was cut very short, so short that it stood up like a thick brush all over his head. He had a bulldog sort of face, with a massive chin, deeply cleft in the middle; one eye was also decidedly smaller than the other. His name suited the man’s broad figure and muscular arms to perfection.
“You are late to-night,” he said, addressing Adrian with a sort of growl. “I lay down by the horses and went to sleep; I thought when I heard the clock strike one that you were not coming.”
“I was delayed on my way home from the station,” said Rowton briefly; “here, take Satyr, rub him down well and attend to him before you go to bed.”
“Yes, sir. Do you want any supper?”
“None that I can’t get for myself. Good-night, Samson; I shall not need your services before the morning.”
Rowton turned to his left as he spoke; Samson led the horse away to the stables which stood to the right of the Bungalow. Rowton entered the lowly built house under a heavy porch. A paraffin lamp was burning in the hall; he took it up and entered a sort of general sitting-room. It was long and low; there were three windows occupying the greater part of one of the walls; the room was furnished in nondescript style, partly as dining-room and partly as study; a square of carpet placed in front of the fire gave a certain degree of comfort to the upper portion of the apartment; the lower part near the entrance door was bare of carpet and also of furniture. A high desk occupied the whole of one window. Rowton placed the paraffin lamp now on this desk; he turned it up high and the light illuminated the entire room.