“Now, my boy,” he said, “can you tell me why the one who ransacked this room, in opening and tumbling the contents of all the drawers, about, did not open the two at the bottom of the row where I stand?”
“Because there was nothing in them of value, sir,” replied the lad.
“What is in them?” said my father.
“Only old letters, sir, written to my father, when I was in Paris—nothing else.”
“And who would know that?” said my father.
The boy went suddenly white.
“Precisely!” said my father. “You alone knew it, and when you undertook to give this library the appearance of a pillaged room, you unconsciously endowed your imaginary robber with the thing you knew yourself. Why search for loot in drawers that contained only old letters? So your imaginary robber reasoned, knowing what you knew. But a real robber, having no such knowledge, would have ransacked them lest he miss the things of value that he searched for.”
He paused, his eyes on the lad, his voice deep and gentle.
“Where is the will?” he said.
The white in the boy's face changed to scarlet. He looked a moment about him in a sort of terror; then he lifted his head and put back his shoulders. He crossed the room to a bookcase, took down a volume, opened it and brought out a sheet of folded foolscap. He stood up and faced my father and the men about the room.