Barton stared with glassy, unseeing eyes for a moment; then his eyelids fell.
"The bravest adventures—the yellowest gold," he murmured. Then, so faintly as almost to baffle hearing: "Where—all—our—dreams? Gone—aglimmering. Gone."
That was all.
Impossible? No, just very, very improbable. But how, by its very improbability, it does take on the semblance of design! See how by slender a thread the thing hung, how every corner of the plan fitted. Just one slip Janet Spencer made; she let her thoughts and her words slip into a groove; she repeated herself. And how unerringly life had put her finger upon that clew! So reasoned Harber.
Well, if the indictment were true, there was proof to be had in
Barton's leather case!
Harber, having called the doctor, went to his stateroom.
He opened the leather case. Inside a cover of yellow oiled silk he found first a certificate of deposit for three thousand pounds, and beneath it a packet of letters.
He unwrapped them.
And, though somehow he had known it without the proof, at the sight of them something caught at his heart with a clutch that made it seem to have stopped beating for a long time. For the sprawling script upon the letters was almost as familiar to him as his own. Slowly he reached down and took up the topmost letter, drew the thin shiny sheets from the envelope, fluttered them, dazed, and stared at the signature:
Yours, my dearest lover, JANET.