This time the search left no crevice unexamined. But all was done without avail; and despair began to gain upon Reginald Eversleigh.
What if all the crime, the falsehood, the infamy of the past few days had been committed for no result?
He was turning over the papers in the bureau for the third or fourth time, with trembling hands, in the desperate hope that somehow or other the missing will might have escaped former investigations, when he was arrested by a sudden exclamation from Mr. Missenden, the Plimborough surgeon.
"I don't think you need look any farther, Sir Reginald," said this gentleman.
"What do you mean?" cried Reginald, eagerly.
"I believe the will is found."
"Thank Heaven!" exclaimed the young man.
"You mistake, Sir Reginald," said Mr. Missenden, who was kneeling by the fire-place, looking intently at some object in the polished steel fender; "if I am right, and that this really is the document in question, I fear it will be of very little use to you."
"It has been destroyed!" gasped Reginald.
"I fear so. This looks to me like the fragment of a will."