Then with a sudden effort Charlie crept forward, nearer the coffin, and read upon its plate the words, plainly engraved:
JEAN ADAM. AGED 49.
Then Adam had been entrapped there—and had lost his life!
Both men started as the tragic truth dawned upon them. Adam was old Sam’s most bitter enemy. He was dead—in his coffin—yet the millionaire had, up to the present, been unable to dispose of the remains. There was no medical certificate, therefore burial was impossible.
The weird stories which both men had heard of nocturnal visitors to that house who had never been seen to emerge, and of long boxes like coffins which more than one person said they had seen being brought out and loaded upon four-wheeled cabs all now flashed across their minds.
Of a verity that house was a house of grim shadows, for murder was committed there. Men entered alive, and left it dead.
Max stood by the coffin of the man who had so cleverly sought to entice him away to Constantinople with stories of easily obtained wealth, and remained there breathless in wonder. He recollected Sam’s words, and saw in them a bitter hatred of the Franco-English adventurer. Had he carried this hatred to the extreme limit—that of secret assassination?
Charlie, on his part, stood silent also. He knew well that upon the death of Adam depended the future prosperity of his master. He was well aware, alas! that Adam, having suddenly reappeared, had vowed a terrible and crushing vengeance upon the head of the great firm of Statham Brothers.
But old Sam, with his usual crafty forethought and innate cunning, had forestalled him. The adventurer had been done to death, and was already in his coffin!
In his cool audacity old Sam had actually prepared the lead-lined coffin with its plate ready inscribed!