“No,” I said quietly, “I cannot permit you to touch anything there.”
“You cannot permit—you!” she cried, facing me.
“And who, pray, are you? Have I not more right to know what he has here than you?”
And with a sudden wrench she broke the hasp of the weak, foreign-made lock, and next instant turned the whole of the contents, clothes and papers, out upon the floor.
Quickly she searched among the quantity of papers, as though looking for something. Yet she was disappointed.
I took up several of the folded documents and found that they were bonds and other securities. It almost seemed as though the mysterious Massari had fled at an instant’s warning and taken all the valuables he had at hand.
The second portmanteau resisted her efforts to break it open, therefore I handed her the key. If, as she said, that man had held her future in his hands, she certainly had a right to look through what he had left behind.
In her eagerness she tossed the papers hither and thither, now pausing to scan a letter and now breaking open a sealed envelope and hastily ascertaining the contents.
“No,” she cried hoarsely at last, turning fiercely to where the dead body lay. “You have left no written record. Brute! coward! assassin!” she hissed between her teeth, shaking her fist in the dead man’s face. “You refused to give me my freedom—to clear my honour—you laughed in my face—you who knew the truth but refused to speak!”
The scene was terrible, the living execrating the dead. I took her by the arm and tried to lead her away. But she shook me off, crying:—