The solicitor nodded in the affirmative, the deep lines upon his thin face becoming more accentuated.
I then told him of his client’s wilful destruction of a large quantity of English banknotes which he had compelled me to burn, whereat the man seated at his table laughed grimly, saying—
“I do not think we need regret their destruction. They were better burnt.”
“Why?”
“Well—because they were not genuine ones.”
“But surely—your client was not a forger!” I cried.
“Certainly not. He was a great man. Cruelly misjudged by the public, he was compelled in recent years to hide his real identity beneath another name, and live in strictest retirement. His actions were put down as eccentricities, but he was a great thinker, a wonderful organiser, marvellously modern among modern men, a man whose financial schemes brought millions into the pockets of those associated with him, yet whose knowledge of ancient Egypt and dry-as-dust Egyptology was perhaps unique. But above all he was ever honest, upright and just.”
“He was a complete enigma to me,” I declared. “As he was to most people. I who have been his legal adviser and friend through much adversity, alone understood him. I was not even aware of his death. If he took a liking to you I shall not be surprised to find that he has left you a substantial legacy.”
“He gave me a present before he died,” I said, and told him of the banknotes I had found in the envelope, and also that I held the cylinder in the security of the Safe Deposit Company’s vaults in Chancery Lane.
Finding the solicitor was perfectly frank and open with me, I related the curious and startling circumstances which had occurred within my knowledge since I had made the acquaintance of Mr Harvey Shaw. As I sat in the fading light of that November afternoon I narrated the facts in their proper sequence just as I have herein set them down in the foregoing pages of this personal history.