Chapter Five.
Certain Curious Facts.
Both men searched eagerly through the drawers of the writing-table to see if the dead man had left another envelope addressed to his friend. Two of the drawers were locked, but these they opened with the key which they found upon poor Jerrold’s watch-chain which he was wearing.
Some private papers, accounts and ledgers, were in the drawers, but the envelope of which they were in search they failed to discover.
It seemed evident that Jerome Jerrold had written the envelope in which he had enclosed a letter, but, on reflection, he had torn it up. Though the crumpled fragments of the envelope were there, yet the letter—whatever it might have been—was missing. And their careful examination of the waste-paper basket revealed nothing, whereupon Sir Houston Bird remarked—
“He may, of course, have changed his mind, and burned it, after all!”
“Perhaps he did,” Jack agreed. “But I wonder what could have been the message he wished to give me a year after his death? Why not now?”
“People who take their own lives sometimes have curious hallucinations. I have known many. Suicide is a fascinating, if very grim study.”