“I do not say so; but then as yet I hardly know the process by which that belief has been reached.”
“But I say so;—I say that is too exact. There is more of imagination in it than of true deduction. I certainly should not recommend another person to proceed far on such reasoning. You see it has been in this way.” Then he explained to his brother attorney the process of little circumstances by which he had arrived at his own opinion;—the dislike of the man to leave the house, his clinging to one room, his manifest possession of a secret as evinced by his conversations with Farmer Griffith, his continual dread of something, his very clinging to Llanfeare as a residence which would not have been the case had he destroyed the will, his exaggerated fear of the coming cross-examination, his ready assertion that he had destroyed nothing and hidden nothing—but his failure to reply when he was asked whether he was aware of any such concealment. Then the fact that the books had not been searched themselves, that the old Squire had never personally used the room, but had used a book or one or two books which had been taken from it; that these books had been volumes which had certainly been close to him in those days when the lost will was being written. All these and other little details known to the reader made the process by which Mr. Apjohn had arrived at the conclusion which he now endeavoured to explain to Mr. Brodrick.
“I grant that the chain is slight,” said Mr. Apjohn, “so slight that a feather may break it. The strongest point in it all was the look on the man’s face when I asked him the last question. Now I have told you everything, and you must decide what we ought to do.”
But Mr. Brodrick was a man endowed with lesser gifts than those of the other attorney. In such a matter Mr. Apjohn was sure to lead. “What do you think yourself?”
“I would propose that we, you and I, should go together over to Llanfeare tomorrow and ask him to allow us to make what further search we may please about the house. If he permitted this—”
“But would he?”
“I think he would. I am not at all sure but what he would wish to have the will found. If he did, we could begin and go through every book in the library. We would begin with the sermons, and soon know whether it be as I have suggested.”
“But if he refused?”
“Then I think I would make bold to insist on remaining there while you went to a magistrate. I have indeed already prepared Mr. Evans of Llancolly, who is the nearest magistrate. I would refuse to leave the room, and you would then return with a search warrant and a policeman. But as for opening the special book or books, I could do that with or without his permission. While you talk to him I will look round the room and see where they are. I don’t think much of it all, Mr. Brodrick; but when the stake is so high, it is worth playing for. If we fail in this, we can then only wait and see what the redoubtable Mr. Cheekey may be able to do for us.”
Thus it was settled that Mr. Brodrick and Mr. Apjohn should go out to Llanfeare on the following morning.
XX
Doubts
“I know nothing about it,” Cousin Henry had gasped out when asked by Mr. Apjohn, when Ricketts, the clerk, had left the room, whether he knew where the will was hidden. Then, when he had declared he had nothing further to say, he was allowed to go away.
As he was carried back in the fly he felt certain that Mr. Apjohn knew that there had been a will, knew that the will was still in existence, knew that it had been hidden by some accident, and knew also that he, Henry Jones, was aware of the place of concealment. That the man should have been so expert in reading the secret of his bosom was terrible to him. Had the man suspected him of destroying the will—a deed the doing of which might have been so naturally suspected—that would have been less terrible. He had done nothing, had committed no crime, was simply conscious of the existence of a paper which it was a duty, not of him, but of others to find, and this man, by his fearful ingenuity, had discovered it all! Now it was simply necessary that the place should be indicated, and in order that he himself might be forced to indicate it, Mr. Cheekey was to be let loose upon him!
How impossible—how almost impossible had he found it to produce a word in answer to that one little question from Mr. Apjohn! “Nor know where it is hidden?” He had so answered it as to make it manifest that he did know. He was conscious that he had been thus weak, though there had been nothing in Mr. Apjohn’s manner to appal him. How would it be with him when, hour after hour, question after question should be demanded of him, when that cruel tormentor should stand there glaring at him in presence of all the court? There would be no need of such hour—no need of that prolonged questioning. All that was wanted of him would be revealed at once. The whole secret would be screwed out of him by the first turn of the tormentor’s engine.
There was but one thing quite fixed in his mind. Nothing should induce him to face Mr. Cheekey, unless he should have made himself comparatively safe by destroying the will.
