“From where we stand here we can see a small casket of chased brass—Indian work, I think he called it.”
“Certainly.”
“Well, now, I chanced to pass this, and a thought occurred to me that I’d look what was in that box. I did so, and when I saw, I closed it up again and came to you to get your opinion.”
With that he opened the glass doors of the cabinet, took forth the little casket and opened it.
Inside there was nothing but ashes. They were white ashes, similar to those I had found in my own rooms after Aline had departed!
“Good God!” I gasped, scarcely believing my own eyes. “What was in this box before?”
“When I opened it last week, sir, there was a rosary, such as the Roman Catholics use. It belonged to my master’s grandmother, he once told me. She was a Catholic.”
I turned the ashes over in my hand. Yes, there was no doubt whatever that it had been a rosary, for although the beads were consumed yet the tiny lengths of wire which had run through them remained unmelted, but had been blackened and twisted by the heat. There was one small lump of metal about the size of a bean, apparently silver, and that I judged to have been the little crucifix appended.
“It’s extraordinary!” I said, bewildered, when I reflected that this fact lent additional colour to my vague theory that Aline might have visited Roddy before his death. “It’s most extraordinary!”
“Yes, sir, it is,” Ash replied. “But what makes it the more peculiar is the fact that about a year ago I found a little pile of ashes very similar to these when I went one morning to dust the master’s dressing-table. He always kept a little pocket Testament there, but it had gone, and only the ashes remained in its place. I called him, and when he saw them he seemed very upset, and said—‘Take them out of my sight, Ash! Take them away! It’s the Devil’s work!’”