He was leaning back in his chair, a prey to a host of bitter thoughts, when Trant, looking at once mysterious and important, entered the room, carrying in one hand a letter, and in the other a large key.
“If you please, Sir Gilbert,” he said, in deprecatory tones, for he knew how ill his master brooked being disturbed when in a brown study, “this letter, addressed to you, with the key of the strong room, has just been found on your study table by the housemaid whose duty it is to dust the room. As the letter is marked ‘Immediate,’ I thought that perhaps——”
“The key of the strong room lying on my study table, do you say?” broke in Sir Gilbert. “How could it possibly have got there?”
While speaking he had taken both the key and the letter. Having put on his glasses he looked at the address on the letter and shook his head. The writing was wholly strange to him. Wondering greatly, he laid the key on the table in front of him and broke open the envelope. Trant stole out of the room on tiptoe; he seemed to scent a mystery.
“Should Sir Gilbert Clare,” began the letter, “feel anxious as to the whereabouts of his self-styled grandson he will find him locked up in the strong room, the key of which accompanies this missive. It will be for the young man to explain to Sir Gilbert’s satisfaction the nature of the business which took him there between twelve and one o’clock this morning.
“Further, it may be as well to open Sir Gilbert Clare’s eyes to a fact in respect of which he seems to have been deliberately hoodwinked. Luigi Rispani is not his grandson, but merely a nephew of the woman who married John Alexander Clare. The said John Alexander Clare had but one child—a daughter—who died when a few months old. In accepting Luigi Rispani as his grandson Sir Gilbert Clare has allowed himself to be made the victim of a fraud.
“ONE WHO KNOWS.”
For full ten minutes after he had finished reading the note Sir Gilbert sat without moving, his eyes closed and his chin sunk on his breast. So old and worn and white did he look that he might have been taken for one already dead. Many times in his life had he drunk deep of the waters of bitterness, but perhaps never before had they tasted so utterly bitter. For the moment his soul cried out, “I can bear no more! Give me death—give me anything rather than this!” But presently the strong man within him, which was not yet wholly overcome, began to reassert itself, and a voice seemed to say to him, “If what you have just heard be the truth, then is it better that the truth should be known, at whatever cost to yourself and others. Anything is better than that you should remain the unwitting participant in a living lie.” He opened his eyes, sighed and sat up. What a change had come over his life in a few short minutes!
Presently he touched the handbell on the table, to which Trant, who had been listening for it, at once responded.
“Present my compliments to Lady Pell, and tell her that I am very desirous of having a word with her here, and as soon as Mr. Lisle arrives request him to come to me.” He felt that he must share his burden with someone; it was too weighty to be borne alone.