The Broken Thread Part 5

"Not to my knowledge, Mr Raife--or Sir Raife, as I suppose I ought to call you now," was the sombre, and rather sad, man's reply.

"Well, he had a secret," exclaimed Raife, looking at him, searchingly.

"How do you know?"

"He told Edgson, the butler, before he died."

"Told his servant his secret!" echoed the lawyer, knitting his brows.

"No. He told him something--not all."

"What did he tell him?" asked Mr Kellaway, in quick eagerness.

"My father said he wished that he had been frank with me, and revealed the truth."

"Of what?"

"Of his secret. He left me a message, urging me to beware of the trap.

Of what nature is the pitfall?" asked the young man. "You, his friend, must know."

"I regret, but I know absolutely nothing," declared the solicitor, frankly. "This is all news to me. What do you think was the nature of the secret? Is it concerning money matters?"

"No. I believe it mainly concerns a woman," the young man replied. "My father had no financial worries. He was, as you know, a rich man.

Evidently he was anxious on my behalf, or he would not have given Edgson that message. Ah! If his lips could only speak again--poor, dear guv'nor."

And the young man sighed.

"Perhaps Edgson knows something?" the solicitor suggested.

"He knows nothing. He only suspects that there is a lady concerned in it, for my father, before his death, referred to `her'."

"Your respected father was my client and friend through many years,"

said Mr Kellaway. "As far as I know, he had no secrets from me."

Raife looked him straight in the face for a few moments without speaking. Like all undergraduates he had no great liking for lawyers.

"Look here, Kellaway," he said slowly. "Are you speaking the truth?"

"The absolute truth," was the other's grave reply.

"Then you know of no secret of my father's. None--eh?"

"Ah, that is quite a different question," the solicitor said. "During the many years I have acted for your late father I have been entrusted with many of his secrets--secrets of his private affairs and suchlike matters with which a man naturally trusts his lawyer. But there was nothing out of the common concerning any of them."

"Nothing concerning any lady?"

"Nothing--I a.s.sure you."

"Then what do you surmise regarding `the trap,' about which my father left me this inexplicable message?"

"Edgson may be romancing," the lawyer suggested. "In every case of a sudden and tragic death, the servant, male or female, always has some curious theory concerning the affair, some gossip or some scandal concerning their employer."

"Edgson has been in our family ever since he was a lad. He's not romancing," replied Raife dryly.

Mr Kellaway was a hard, level-headed, pessimistic person, who judged all men as law-breakers and criminals. He was one of those smug, old-fas.h.i.+oned Bedford Row solicitors, who had a dozen peers as clients, who transacted only family business, and whose firm was an eminently respectable one.

"I have always thought Edgson a most reliable servant," he admitted, crossing to the safe, the key of which Raife had handed to him.

"So he is. And when he tells me that my father possessed a secret, which he has carried to his grave--then I believe him. I have never yet known Edgson to tell a lie. Neither has my father. He was only saying so at dinner one night three months ago."

"I have no personal knowledge of any secret of the late Sir Henry's,"

responded the elder man, speaking quite openly. "If I knew of any I would tell you frankly."

"No, you wouldn't, Kellaway. You know you wouldn't betray a client's confidence," said Raife, with a grim, bitter smile, as he stood by the ancient window gazing across the old Jacobean garden.

"Ah, perhaps you're right. Perhaps you're right," replied the man addressed. "But at any rate I repeat that I am ignorant of any facts concerning your father's past that he had sought to hide."

"You mean that you will not betray my dead father's confidence?"

"I mean what I say, Sir Raife--that I am in entire ignorance of anything which might be construed into a scandal."

"I did not suggest scandal, Mr Kellaway," was his rather hard reply.

"My father was, I suspect, acquainted with the man who shot him. The two men met in this room, and, I believe, the recognition was mutual!"

"Your father knew the a.s.sa.s.sin?" echoed the lawyer, staring at the young man.

"I believe so."

"It seems incredible that Sir Henry should have been acquainted with an expert burglar--for such he apparently was."

"Why should he have left me that warning message? Why should he seek to forewarn me of some mysterious trap?"

The old solicitor shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply. The whole, tragic affair was a complete and absolute mystery.

The London papers that afternoon were full of it, and already a host of eager reporters and press-photographers were waiting about on the off-chance of obtaining a glimpse of Raife, or any other member of the bereaved family. More than one had had the audacity to send in his card to Raife with a request for an interview, which had promptly been refused, and Edgson now had orders that the young master was not at home to any one.

Raife, still unconvinced that Mr Kellaway was in ignorance of his father's secret, took him across to the cottage where lay the body of the stranger. The police were no longer there, but two doctors were making an examination. The inquest had been fixed for the morrow, and the medical men were consulting prior to the post-mortem.

The cause of death was only too apparent, but the principles of the law are hidebound, and it was necessary that a post-mortem should be made, in order that the coroner's jury should arrive at their verdict.

Later Raife, a.s.sisted the family solicitor to gather out the contents of the safe and make them into bundles, which they sealed up carefully and counted.

"Of course," Kellaway said, "I am not aware of the contents of your lamented father's will, and I frankly confess I was rather disappointed at not being asked to make it."

"I think it was made by some solicitors in Edinburgh," was Raife's reply. "Gordon and Gordon, I believe, is the name of the firm. It is deposited at Barclay's Bank in London."

"The executors will, no doubt, know. You have wired to them, you say?"

Then, after a pause, Kellaway added: "The fact that Sir Henry engaged a strange solicitor to draw up his will would rather lead to the a.s.sumption that he had something to hide from me, wouldn't it?"