"Yes; nearly that long ago I found him in a faint on the carpet of the library, for he had received a warning of some kind and I failed to get the secret from him. It must be the old enemy—the one he made in Europe."
"He traveled through the Continent, then?"
"I believe he made a tour of the world. I recall some of his descriptions of places which are very far apart. But the most terrible thing connected with this is that he should be killed in his own house, deliberately strangled, while Nora was quietly reading in her boudoir upstairs."
"It makes it the more mysterious. The murderer entered by the front door and made his exit that way. He knew the mansion; he knew that your father was at home and unprotected."
"It must have been thus. Had I been at home the blow would not have fallen. He was killed on the eve of his sixty-fourth birthday. Why didn't the monster permit him to round out the year?"
"Perhaps that was in the scheme."
"Heavens! I never thought of that!" cried Foster Kipp. "It must have been a part of the diabolical game—to kill him before he became sixty-four. I remember last year he received a letter which threw him into a white rage, and tearing it up in this room he declared that he would pass this day safely and live many years yet. But it was not to be; the foe found him."
For half an hour longer the detective talked with the son and drew from him all he knew about his father's past.
"I nominate you his avenger," said Foster, looking calmly into Old Broadbrim's face, while they occupied armchairs near the desk in the fatal library. "I send you out on this trail asking you to follow it wherever it leads, through thick and thin, never losing sight of it till you close in upon the murderer. Drag him from his hiding place; stand him under the noose and then come to me for your reward. It will not be small. Father left millions behind, and they are mine now—mine and Nora's, and she joins me in this hunt for the murderer."
Old Broadbrim stood before the young man and looked into his white face, earnest with anxiety and seamed with eagerness that seemed to be devouring him.