The Last Stroke Part 15

"I haven't, and I won't. I'd do more than that for the sake of your brother, Mr. Brierly, and you've only to tell me what I can do."

"I intend to examine my brother's papers now, Mrs. Fry, before I leave the house, and if we should need you again we will let you know." And Mrs. Fry withdrew, puzzled and wondering much, but with her lips tightly set over the secret she must and would help to preserve.

"She'll keep silent, never fear," said the doctor as the door closed behind her. "And now, Brierly, I must remind you that you will need all your strength, and that I don't like your colour this morning. If you must investigate at once, get it over, for you, even more than Ferrars or I, need your morning coffee and steak."

"That is true," agreed Ferrars. "Brierly, let me ask two questions, and then oblige me by leaving certain marks, which I will point out to you, just as you find them."

"Your questions." Brierly had already seated himself before his brother's desk.

"I have an idea that this old oak writing-desk was not selected by our friend, Mrs. Fry. Am I right?"

"It is my brother's desk; bought for its compact and portable qualities."

"Good! Now, where did your brother usually keep these keepsakes and bits of foreign jewellery?"

"In one of these drawers. He kept them in a lacquered j.a.panese box."

"Look for them. And, before you begin, oblige me by not touching that letter file above the desk, nor the desk top just below it."

The letter file held only a few bits of paper, apparently notes and memoranda; and upon the flat top of the desk was a bronze ink well, a pen tray, a thin layer of dust and nothing more, except a tiny sc.r.a.p of paper hardly as big as a thumb nail, which lay directly beneath the letter file. Brierly cast a wandering glance over the desk top and file and set about his task.

There was quite a litter of papers, letters mostly, together with some loose sheets that contained figures, dates, or something begun and cast aside. Below some of the pigeon holes, letters lay as if hastily pulled out, and from one of these little receptacles three or four envelopes protruded, half out, half in--one, a square white envelope, projecting beyond the others. These Brierly pulled forth, and turning them over in his hand, scrutinised their superscriptions. Then slowly he took the square white wrapper from among the others, and drew out the letter it contained. As he began to scan the page of closely lined writing he started, frowned, flushed hotly, and then with a look of fierce anger he thrust the sheet back into its envelope, and turned toward the detective.

"Take that!" he said with a curl of the lip. "Unless I am greatly at fault, it's a doc.u.ment in the case."

Ferrars took the letter from him, and asked, as he thrust it into the pocket of his loose coat without so much as glancing at it, "Do you mind my running over the papers in this rack, Brierly? and looking into the waste basket?"

"Do it, by all means," was the reply as Brierly pulled open the topmost drawer; and then for some time there was silence, save for the rustle of paper or the rasping of a hinge or turning k.n.o.b.

When Brierly had finished his silent search of the two drawers, he approached the detective with a small lacquered box in his hand.

"The watch and the foreign jewels are gone," he said, holding out the open box. "And what do you think of this? Here are my mother's keepsakes, wrapped in tissue paper, and labelled in my brother's hand, 'Mementos. From my mother.' The thief has spared these."

The detective, who was now seated beside the table, holding a folded newspaper in his hand, took the box, looked at the tiny packet within, nodded and pa.s.sed it silently to the doctor.

"And now," went on Robert Brierly, and there was a new ring of resolution and menace in his voice. "I turn the rooms and all they contain over to you, Mr. Ferrars, and I await your opinion, when you have read that letter in your pocket."

Ferrars drew forth the envelope and looked at it for the first time. It was only a fragment, for a large corner of its face was missing, the corner, in fact, which should have borne the postage stamp and the postmaster's seal.

Without a word he held this side towards the two men, extending it first to one, and then to the other.

"You see!" he said, and then to Brierly. "Was it your brother's habit to tear his letters open in such a reckless manner?"

"No. He was almost dainty in all his ways."

"Is there another letter in that desk torn as this is?"

Without a word Brierly took the letter and went back to the desk, catching the letters from their pigeon holes by the handful.

"I understand," he said, when he came back to them. "No, there is not a torn envelope there."

"Then," said the detective, "I think I may venture to give an opinion even before I look at this letter."

CHAPTER X.

THIS HELPS ME.

The three men were now standing grouped about the table with its scattered books and ma.n.u.scripts, and Ferrars bent toward Robert Brierly, putting a hand upon his shoulder.

"Brierly," he said, "sit down; this thing is using up your strength. I will tell you what I think of all this, and then we must lock up this place for a little while just as it is." And as Brierly obediently dropped into the chair which the doctor quickly placed beside him, the detective resumed.

"Since yesterday half a dozen theories have suggested themselves to my mind as possible explanations of this very daring murder, for I am now fully convinced that it is nothing less; but I make it a rule never to accept, much less announce, a belief, until I have established at least a reasonable series of corroborative circ.u.mstances. This I have not done entirely to my satisfaction, and so we will not go into the theory of the case, but will see what facts we have established; and fact number one, to my mind, is this: Your brother, Mr. Brierly, was most certainly shot down with malice aforethought. He could not have shot himself, and no one, in that open place, could have killed him by accident. He may have been entirely unaware of it, but he had an enemy; and the deed of yesterday was planned, I believe, long ago, and studied carefully in every detail."

Robert Brierly flushed and paled. He opened his lips as if to speak, but the detective's eyes were steadfastly turned away, and he resumed almost at once.

"I blame myself that I did not establish myself here last night, as I at first thought of doing. But it is too late for useless regret. And now, about this boy. Have you, either of you, a thought, a suspicion, as to his ident.i.ty?"

The doctor shook his head.

"You can't suspect one of the pupils, surely?" hazarded Brierly.

"Be sure that Mrs. Fry knows every pupil in Glenville, by sight, at least; and this lad was a stranger, remember. It was a clever lad who first secured the key to these rooms and then decoyed Mrs. Fry half way across the town perhaps. How long must it have taken her, Doc, to go and come, in haste?"

"Quite half an hour, I should think."

"Well, we will a.s.sure ourselves of that later. Now we will suppose that this strange boy was acquainted with these rooms to some extent, and that he was, I fully believe. When Mrs. Fry is out of sight--and we know, from her story, that he was careful that she should be before he left his station upon the front porch--he slips indoors and evidently knows where to look for a lamp, which he does not light until he is inside this room." And Ferrars put a finger upon the match remarked upon by Mrs. Fry. "Now, as Mrs. Fry observed, there has been quite a film of dust in the air for the past twenty-four hours, so that, in spite of the good woman's tidy ways, it has acc.u.mulated upon this dark and s.h.i.+ning wood." And he put down his finger and called their attention to its prints upon the table at his side.

"When we entered this room," he went on, "and I took it upon myself to look at that window with the swinging blind, under pretence of opening the shutters, I first noted that the visitor had left us a clue to his ident.i.ty--several clues, indeed. Before seeing these I had thought that the boy was only an advance guard for some one else, but I see I was wrong. It was the boy, and a very keen and clever boy, who entered here alone. See upon this table, upon the window sills, and upon the desk, the prints of one, two, and sometimes all four, small slender fingers."

Ferrars paused a moment, while they examined the dust prints, faint but yet clear, upon the dark wood, and making lines of clearer colour upon the painted brown of the window sills.

"And what," asked Brierly, speaking for the first time since the detective began his explanation--"what was his real object?"

"His real object! Ah, I see you have been observant, and if I am not much mistaken he has left something; but the things he took were taken solely to cover up the real reason of his coming. Mr. Charles Brierly's pistol, his watch, and the foreign bijouterie were so little wanted by this remarkable boy that he will no doubt get rid of them in some way at the first opportunity. All but one thing."

"And that?" asked Brierly, breathlessly.

Ferrars walked over to the writing-desk and signed them to follow.

"Observe that letter file!" he said. "There is not much upon it, bills for school books, two or three circulars, and so on, but observe that this file hangs over the top of the desk, so that anything falling from it would touch just here. He moistened the tip of a forefinger, and, touching with it a small bit of paper lying upon the top of the desk and just below the letter file, he lifted it deftly, and they all saw beneath it the dust of the previous day upon the polished surface.

"This," said Ferrars, holding out the bit of paper upon the palm of his hand, "was torn from something pulled from this file since Mrs. Fry dusted the furniture here yesterday morning, after Charles Brierly left the house. See, as the paper was pulled from the file this bit came off, because it was attached at the corner, as you see. It is a fragment from a newspaper. If it had been a letter the paper would not have parted so readily; it would merely have torn through."

It was, indeed, a tiny sc.r.a.p of newspaper, not of the best quality, and not half an inch from the smoothly-cut corner to the ragged edge, where the file had perforated it.

"The slip of printed paper from which this was torn," said Ferrars, "was the one thing which was taken from this room because it was wanted! The rest were merely carried away as a blind."