“That brute will tell me more than Abbott can, if I follow the four-footed fellow up.”
“Here is the desk and here are the keys,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, as she unlocked a small desk sitting between the two windows. “Will you search for what you want, Dr. Abbott?”
Abbott accepted the invitation and began a search of the various drawers.
They found numerous letters from the absent son, and such odds and ends as one might expect to find in a private desk of a man whose life was uneventful. But no will turned up.
“This desk is especially arranged to throw off the unwary,” thought Nick, as he watched Abbott sorting papers and investigating pigeonholes. “If I were to search the house, that desk would be the last place I should overhaul.”
The moon was shining brightly as they walked down the path through the lawn, on their return to town. Nick was slightly behind Dr. Abbott, as the path was narrow, and the grass wet with a heavy dew.
Suddenly he saw at his feet a small, square piece of paper, which the wind was playing with. It looked to him like the label from a bottle.
He stooped, picked it up, and, assuring himself that he had made no mistake as to the nature of its former usage, he stuck it into one of his vest pockets.
When he left Abbott, to return to his hotel, he promised the latter to call on him again next morning.
Once safely in his room at the hotel, Nick took the label from his pocket and examined it by the light of his lamp. On it he read: