"Alice?"
Witherspoon smiled sadly, as his friend's excitement betrayed the innocent secret of the young physician's heart.
"No! God be praised!" he slowly answered. "Alice lives to bless some good man's life! But I have here a message from the dead, and the last legacy of a crime! You must go out instantly to Detroit, for I cannot leave our great interests at this juncture. It seems as if the very grave had opened for this!"
Doctor Atwater's eyes were dim when he handed the papers back to his friend. "What could have goaded him on to his unhappy end! What stings and whiplashes of conscience! Let us go carefully over the whole matter together! I will telegraph my departure and then take to-night's train."
The few lines traced by Arthur Ferris' feeble fingers were supplemented by a long and formal letter from the United States Vice-Consul at Amoy.
The enclosure of a verified copy of the will of Arthur Ferris, duly attested by the consular seal, was accompanied by a statement that the original and the keys of Ferris' safe deposit box in New York had been duly forwarded to New York, through the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.
There was a sealed enclosure directed to Miss Alice Worthington, the superscription being faintly discernable in the trembling hand of the fever patient.
And as both men gazed silently at each other, they knew that some dark secret lay veiled there under the outspread wings of the American eagle of the consular seal, which duplicated Ferris' private signet.
With a strange interest, Atwater read of the last sufferings of the unfortunate official. "My late superior seemed to be tortured in his mind to his very last moment," wrote the Vice-Consul, "by the fear that these documents might not safely reach Miss Worthington through you.
"Be pleased to give me the earliest possible acknowledgment of the receipt of both the certified copy herewith sent and the original with the keys and duly certified order for the delivery of the tin box of the deceased to Miss Worthington herself."