“By Jove!” I said. “That’s a pretty plain allegation.”
“Yes, and not far short of the truth,” replied my friend. “With these suspicions in his mind I wonder what could have been the nature of his letter to Harford which you delivered at Totnes Station?”
“It was addressed in the name of Dawnay.”
“One of the names he used—one of his actual Christian names. It is evident, however, that, in it, he gave Harford no cause to suspect that he was aware of the existence of the strange pet, otherwise he would not have made that too successful attempt upon Nicholson.”
“Yes, but by its delivery he knew that its writer was dead,” I said. “Your client, perhaps, acted with some indiscretion in sending it. It at once placed Asta in peril.”
“He had a motive, no doubt—but it imperilled Asta. Yet if he had not sent it you would never have met the young lady, or been instrumental in exposing the clever and ingenious plot from which she has so narrowly escaped with her life,” the solicitor remarked.
The locksmith had been paid and retired. So we were again alone together.
“The wording of this latest will is peculiar,” Mr Fryer went on. “It refers to ‘all that may accrue from the enclosed knowledge.’ What enclosed knowledge, I wonder?”
And taking up the cylinder he again looked into it. “Why, there’s something else here?” he exclaimed, and inserting a long steel letter-opener he succeeded in drawing forth a small roll of ancient brown papyri which, very tender and crumbling, was covered by puzzling Egyptian hieroglyphics.
“This, in all probability,” he exclaimed, “is what the cylinder originally contained when he discovered it in the tomb of the Great Merenptah. We must obtain a translation.”