“An old hand, that’s quite certain. We’ve got his finger-prints in the Department, you bet,” remarked the other. “We’d better take off his gloves and take some prints as soon as we can; they will, no doubt, establish his identity. Mr Caldwell, will you please telephone to a printer’s somewhere near for a little printing-ink?”
“Certainly,” replied the inspector. “I’ll ’phone back to Tunbridge Wells and have it sent out by a constable on a bicycle.”
The three officers then proceeded to make a minute examination of the body, but Raife did not remain. He returned to the house, accompanied by Edgson.
A few minutes later he stood in the library before the open safe, plunged in thought. The sunshine streamed across the fine old room filled with books from floor to ceiling, for Sir Henry was a student, and his library, being his hobby, was cosily furnished—a pleasant, restful place, the long, stained-glass windows of which looked out upon the quaint old Jacobean garden, with its grey, weather-beaten sundial, its level lawns, and high, well-clipped beech hedges.
Raife stood gazing at the safe, which, standing open, just as it was when his father had surprised the intruder, revealed a quantity of papers, bundles of which were tied with faded pink tape: a number of valuable securities, correspondence, insurance policies, and the usual private documentary treasures of an important landowner. Papers concerning the estate were mostly preserved at the agent’s office in Tunbridge Wells: only those concerning his own private affairs did Sir Henry keep in the library.
What had his dead father meant by those dying words uttered to old Edgson? That warning to be careful of the trap! What trap? What could his father fear? What truth was it which his father had hesitated to tell him—the important truth the telling of which had been too late.
He recollected his father’s words as uttered to the faithful old servant: “I was a fool, Edgson. I ought to have told my boy from the first. Every man has a skeleton in his cupboard. This is mine!”
“And, further, who was the woman whom he had referred to as ‘her’?”
The young man gazed upon the dark patch on the carpet near the door, soaked by the life-blood of his unfortunate father. The latter, so suddenly cut off, had carried his secret to the grave.
That big, sombre room, wherein the tragedy had taken place, looked pleasant and cheerful with the bright, summer sunlight now slanting upon it. The big, silver bowl of roses upon the side-table shed a sweet fragrance there, while the spacious, old-fashioned mahogany writing-table was still littered with the dead man’s correspondence.