“No! No! It can’t be possible!” Nan moaned. “He’d been so well to-day!”
In a few minutes both physicians were in the room. They made a hurried examination, asked a few questions, and said there was nothing to be done.
The indomitable spirit of Timothy Farley had escaped from its prison-house; what was mortal of him remained strangely white and still. Nan, kneeling beside the bed, wept softly. Her foster-mother had died after a brief illness and she had experienced no such shock as now numbed her. She had, after all, been closer to Farley than to his wife. Mrs. Farley, with all her gentleness and sweetness, had lacked the positive traits that made Timothy Farley an interesting, masterful character.
“There will be things to do,” Amidon was saying gently. “Do you mind if I tell Mr. Eaton? He’d want to know.”
“No; I should like him to come,” she replied.
Jerry went below with the physicians and called Eaton on the telephone in the lower hall.
Nan rose and began straightening the room. Farley had evidently drawn on his dressing-gown with a view to remaining up some time, and had walked to the quaint little table that had so long stood near the window. Nan saw now what had escaped her when she rushed into the room. The oblong top of the table had been so turned that it disclosed a compartment back of the trio of drawers in which Mrs. Farley had kept her sewing articles. Four long envelopes lay on the lid; two others had fallen to the floor and lay among the debris of the lamp. At a glance she saw that these were similar to the ones she had seen Farley hiding on several occasions, and the counterpart of the envelope containing the will she had read with so much concern. One of the envelopes was torn twice across, as though he had intended disposing of it finally. The others were intact.
She gathered them all together and thrust them back into the table; then ran her fingers along the underside of the lid until she found a tiny catch. Noting the position of this, she drew the top into place, satisfied herself that the spring had caught, and rose just as Jerry came back.
CHAPTER XVII
SHADOWS
Nan lay on her bed, fully dressed, on the evening of the day of the funeral, listening to the sounds of the street with an uncomfortable sense of strangeness and isolation. The faint tinkle of the bell roused her and the maid came up bearing Eaton’s card. She had told the girl to excuse her to callers, but Eaton sent word that he wished particularly to see her. She appeared before him startlingly wan and white in her black gown.