CHAPTER XII
The certificate of Cooper Silwood's death and the accompanying letter had come that morning in a long, queer-looking envelope, plastered half-over with stamps and pitted with postmarks, amongst them being that which showed the packet had been registered. It was addressed to Francis Eversleigh personally: hence it had not been touched by any one prior to his coming to the office.
When he first saw the packet he thought there was something ominous about it, and a sure prescience that it contained bad news deterred him from opening it immediately; he therefore allowed it to lie on his table for some time. Such a want of courage had now become characteristic of the tortured man. At last, however, he screwed himself up to the point of looking into it. As it happened, he took out and glanced at the letter first; it was in a language he did not know, but he guessed it was Italian. It was written in a minute, cramped hand, difficult, in any case, to decipher, and he put it aside. Then he scanned the certificate. Here the printed words and his Latin helped him, and he had little trouble in understanding what it was.
But in his shattered state it did not come home fully to him at once. When it did, the effect on him was terrible—his head swam distressingly, his heart fluttered painfully, as he fell back gasping in his chair.
Cooper Silwood dead!
It seemed impossible to him, as his brain, caught in strange tangles, like water-weeds in an eddy, whirled this way and that.
Dead!
The thing at last impressed itself upon his consciousness so as to blot out everything else for the time.
"What next? What next?" he cried aloud, in a voice that was hardly recognizable as his; it was the protest of a man goaded beyond the limit of endurance.
Then his brain clouded.