“I guess you’re right, Hugh—sure you must be. I’ve been silly to hold back. No matter what I learn, the truth can’t be any worse than this terrible uncertainty that’s gripping me, and making me shiver as if I had the ague again.” He jumped from his seat as though determined to carry his words into effect.
“I suppose the first thing I ought to look at is my trunk, eh, Hugh?” he went on to say, fumbling in a pocket for his keys.
“Well, you know better than I do where you keep your valuables,” said the other, trying to appear merry, though somehow, Tom did not respond to any appreciable extent. “I see that since that other time I was up here you’ve changed your way of leaving your trunk unlocked.”
Tom flushed, and shook his head.
“Oh! I tell you it galled me to think I was locking it against my own brother,” he said, tremulously, “but then I remembered that it is a sin to put temptation in the path of any fellow whose weakness you know. Though for that matter a common key would unlock this trunk.”
He soon threw back the lid and bent over, fumbling through the contents. Hugh stood close by, watching him with more or less curiosity and interest. He saw that Tom was evidently in fear and trembling, as though constantly dreading lest he make some unpleasant discovery.
As he proceeded he seemed to regain a portion of his former confidence.
“Here’s my little savings bank all right, Hugh, and no one could ever manage to get anything out of that in the short time he was in my room, even if the trunk could be opened. So far as I can see, nothing has been taken out of here.”
When he allowed the lid to drop again Tom was looking more or less relieved. Evidently his main concern had been in connection with the money, he had in that little metal bank, for if Benjy had meant to take anything it would seem that ready cash would tempt him more than all else.
“Oh! perhaps, Hugh, he didn’t come in here for that,” he broke out with. “I remember now that sometimes in the past when Benjy was going out to a party he used to want to fix his tie, and brush his hair before the mirror in my room, for he said the light was better here. It may have been that, Hugh, you know.”