blurtedforth my friend, selecting a fresh cigar, and biting off the endviciously.
"He left his secret to me remember."
"He may have destroyed it after making the will," my friend suggested.
"No, it is either hidden or has been stolen--which is not at all plain.For my own part, I consider that the theory of murder is graduallybecoming dispelled. If he had any suspicion that he had been the victimof foul play, he surely would have made some remark to us before hedied. Of that I feel absolutely convinced."
"Very probably," he remarked, rather dubiously, however. "But what wehave now to discover is whether that little bag he wore is still inexistence."
"The man Dawson was evidently in England before poor Blair's death. Itmay have passed into his possession," I suggested.
"He would, in all probability, endeavour to get hold of it," Reggieagreed. "We must establish where he was and what he was doing on thatday when Blair was so mysteriously seized in the train. I don't likethe fellow, apart from his alias and the secrecy of friendship withBlair. He means mischief, old chap--distinct mischief. I saw it inthat one eye of his. Remember what he said about Blair giving him away.It struck me that he contemplates revenge upon poor Mabel."
"He'd better not try to injure her," I exclaimed fiercely. "I've mypromise to keep to poor Burton, and I'll keep it--by Heaven, I will!--tothe very letter. She sha'n't fall into the hands of that adventurer,I'll take good care."
"She's in fear of him already. I wonder why?"
"Unfortunately she won't tell me. He probably holds some guilty secretof the dead man's, the truth of which, if exposed, might, for all weknow, have the effect of placing Mabel herself outside the pale of goodsociety."
Seton grunted, lolled back in his chair, and gazed thoughtfully into thefire.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, after a brief silence. "I wonder whether thatis so?"
On the following morning, as we were seated at breakfast, a note fromMabel was brought by a boy-messenger, asking me to come round toGrosvenor Square at once. Therefore without delay I swallowed mycoffee, struggled into my overcoat, and a quarter of an hour laterentered the bright morning-room where the dead man's daughter, her facerather flushed by excitement, stood awaiting me.
"What's the matter?" I inquired quickly as I took her hand, fearingthat the man she loathed had already called upon her.
"Nothing serious," she laughed. "I have only a piece of very good newsfor you."
"For me--what?"
Without answering, she placed on the table a small plain silvercigarette-box, upon one corner of the lid of which was engraved thecipher double B, that monogram that was upon all Blair's plate,carriages, harness and other possessions.
"See what is inside that," she exclaimed, pointing to the box beforeher, and smiling sweetly with profound satisfaction.
I eagerly took it in my hands and raising the lid, peered within.
"What!" I cried aloud, almost beside myself with joy. "It can't reallybe?"
"Yes," she laughed. "It is."
And then, with trembling fingers, I drew forth from the box the actualobject that had been bequeathed to me, the little well-worn bag ofchamois leather, the small sachet about the size of a man's palm,attached to which was a thin but very strong golden chain for suspendingit around the neck.
"I found it this morning quite accidentally, just as it is, in a secretdrawer in the old bureau in my father's dressing-room," she explained."He must have placed it there for security before leaving for Scotland."
I held it in my hand utterly stupefied, yet with the most profoundgratification. Did not the very fact that Blair had taken it off andplaced it in that box rather than risk wearing it during that journey tothe North prove that he had gone in fear of an attempt being made toobtain its possession? Nevertheless, the curious little objectbequeathed to me under such strange conditions was now actually in myhand, a flat, neatly-sewn bag of wash-leather that was black with ageand wear, about half-an-inch thick, and containing something flat andhard.
Within was concealed the great secret, the knowledge of which had raisedBurton Blair from a homeless seafarer into affluence. What it could be,neither Mabel nor I could for a moment imagine.
Both of us were breathless, equally eager to ascertain the truth.Surely never in the life of any man was there presented a moreinteresting or a more tantalising problem.
In silence she took up a pair of small buttonhole scissors from thelittle writing-table in the window and handed them to me.
Then, my hand trembling with excitement, I inserted the point into theend of the leather packet and made a long sharp cut the whole of itslength, but what fell out upon the carpet next instant caused us both toutter loud exclamations of surprise.
Burton Blair's most treasured possession, the Great Secret which he hadcarried on his person all those years and through all those wanderings,now at last revealed, proved utterly astounding.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
GIVES AN EXPERT OPINION.
Upon the carpet at our feet lay scattered a pack of very small, ratherdirty cards which had fallen from the little sachet, and which both ofus stood regarding with surprise and disappointment.
For my own part I expected to find within that treasured bag ofwash-leather something of more value than those thumbed and halfworn-out pieces of pasteboard, but our curiosity was instantly arousedwhen, on stooping, I picked up one of them and discovered certainletters written in brown faded ink upon it, similar to those upon thecard already in my possession.
It chanced to be the ten of diamonds, and in order that you may be ableto the more clearly understand the arrangement of the letters upon them,I reproduce it here:--
"How strange!" cried Mabel, taking the card and examining it closely."It surely must be some cipher, the same as the other card which I foundsealed up in the safe."
"No doubt," I exclaimed, as, stooping and gathering up the remainder ofthe pack, I noticed that upon each of them, either upon the front orupon the back, were scrawled either fourteen or fifteen letters in atreble column, all, of course, utterly unintelligible.
I counted them. It was a piquet pack of thirty-one, the missing cardbeing the ace of hearts which we had already discovered. By thefriction of having been carried on the person for so long the cornersand edges were worn, while the gloss of the surface had long agodisappeared.
Aided by Mabel I spread them all upon the table, utterly bewildered bythe columns of letters which showed that some deep secret was writtenupon them, yet what it was we were utterly unable to decipher.
Upon the front of the ace of clubs was scrawled in three parallelcolumns of five letters each, thus:--
E H N W E D T O L I E H W H R
Again, I turned up the king of spades and found on the reverse onlyfourteen letters:--
Q W F T S W T H U O F E Y E
"I wonder what it all means?" I exclaimed, carefully examining thewritten characters in the light. The letters were in capitals just asrudely and unevenly drawn as those upon the ace of hearts, evidently byan uneducated hand. Indeed the A's betrayed a foreign form rather thanEnglish, and the fact that some of the cards were inscribed on theobverse and others on the reverse seemed to convey some hidden meaning.What it was, however, was both tantalising and puzzling.
"It certainly is very curious," Mabel remarked after she had vainlystriven to construct intelligible words from the columns of letters bythe easy methods of calculation. "I had no idea that my father carriedhis secret concealed in this manner."
"Yes," I said, "it really is amazing. No doubt his secret is reallywritten here, if we only knew the key. But in all probability hisenemies are aware of its existence, or he would not have left itsecreted here when he set forth on his journey to Manchester. That manDawson may know it."
"Most probably," was her reply. "He was my father's intimateacquaintance."
"His friend--he says he was."
"Friend!" she cried resentfully. "
No, his enemy."
"And therefore your father held him in fear? It was that reason whichinduced him to insert that very injudicious clause in his will."
And then I described to her the visit of the man Dawson on the previousnight, telling her what he had said, and his impudent, defiant attitudetowards us.
She sighed, but uttered no reply. I noticed that as I spoke hercountenance went a trifle paler, but she remained silent, as though shefeared to speak lest she should inadvertently expose what she intendedshould remain a secret.
My chief thought at that moment, however, was the elucidation of theproblem presented by those thirty-two well-thumbed cards. The secret ofBurton Blair, the knowledge of which had brought him his millions,