“I know him for a d—d blackmailing villain!” Audley broke out. Then he remembered himself. He had not told Stubbs of the blackmailing. And, after all, what did it matter? He had made himself safe. Whatever papers he had found, John Audley was dead, and John Audley’s heiress was going to be his wife! The danger to him was naught, and the blackmailer was already disarmed. Still he was not going to spare Stubbs by telling him that. Instead, “What did the boxes contain?” he asked ungraciously.
“Nothing of any value when I examined them, my lord. Old surrenders, fines, and recoveries with some ancient terriers. I could find no document among them that related to the title.”
“That may be,” Audley retorted. “But John Audley expected to find something that related to the title! He knew more than we knew. He knew that those boxes existed, and he knew what he expected to find in them.”
“No doubt. And if your lordship had given me a little more time I should have explained before this that he was disappointed in his expectation; nay, more, that it was that disappointment—as I have little doubt—that caused his collapse and death.”
“How the devil do you know that?”
“If your lordship will have patience I will explain,” Stubbs said, a gleam of malice in his eyes. He rose from his seat and took from a chair beside the door a parcel which he had laid there on his entrance. “I have here that which he found, and that which I don’t doubt caused his death.”
“The deuce you have!” Audley cried, rising to his feet in his surprise. And he watched with all his eyes while the lawyer slowly untied the tape and spread wide the wrappers. The action disclosed a thick quarto volume bound in blue leather, sprinkled on the sides with silver butterflies, and stamped with the arms of Audley. “Good G—d!” Audley continued, “the Family Bible!”
“Yes, the Family Bible,” the lawyer answered, gazing at it complacently, “about which there was so much talk at the opening of the suit. It was identified by a score of references, called for by both sides, sought for high and low, and never produced!”
“And here it is!”
“Here it is. Apparently at some time or other it went out of fashion, was laid aside and lost sight of, and eventually bricked up with a mass of old and valueless papers.”