“As you wish, sir,” assented the landlord. “I shan’t say anything. You wouldn’t like me to find out this gentleman’s name? Somebody’ll know him. My own idea is that he lives in this part—he began coming in here of an evening about a year since.”
“No—do nothing at present,” said Viner. “The inquiries are only beginning.”
He impressed the same obligation of silence on Barleyfield as they went away, and the florist readily understood.
“No hard work for me to hold my tongue, Mr. Viner,” he said. “We tradespeople are pretty well trained to that, sir! There’s things and secrets I could tell! But upon my word, I don’t ever remember quite such a case as this. And I expect it’ll be like most cases of the sort!”
“What do you mean?” asked Viner.
“Oh, there’ll be a sudden flash of light on it, sir, all of a sudden,” replied Barleyfield. “And then—it’ll be as clear as noonday.”
“I don’t know where it’s coming from!” muttered Viner. “I don’t even see a rift in the clouds yet.”
He had been at work for an hour or two with Miss Wickham and Mr. Pawle next morning, searching for whatever might be discovered among Ashton’s effects, before he saw any reason to alter this opinion. The bunch of keys discovered in the murdered man’s pocket had been duly delivered to Miss Wickham by the police, and she handed them over to the old solicitor with full license to open whatever they secured. But both Mr. Pawle and Viner saw at once that Ashton had been one of those men who have no habit of locking up things. In all that roomy house he had but one room which he kept to himself—a small, twelve-foot-square apartment on the ground floor, in which, they said, he used to spend an hour or two of a morning. It contained little in the way of ornament or comfort—a solid writing-desk with a hard chair, an easy-chair by the fireplace, a sofa against the wall, a map of London and a picture or two, a shelf of old books, a collection of walking-sticks, and umbrellas: these made up all there was to see.
And upon examination the desk yielded next to nothing. One drawer contained a cashbox, a checkbook, a passbook. Some sixty or seventy pounds in notes, gold and silver lay in the cashbox; the stubs of the checks revealed nothing but the payment of tradesmen’s bills; the passbook showed that an enormous balance lay at the bank. In another drawer rested a collection of tradesmen’s books—Mr. Ashton, said Mrs. Killenhall, used to pay his tradesmen every week; these books had been handed to him on the very evening of his death for settlement next morning.
“Evidently a most methodical man!” remarked Mr. Pawle. “Which makes it all the more remarkable that so few papers are discoverable. You’d have thought that in his longish life he’d have accumulated a good many documents that he wanted to keep.”
But documents there were next to none. Several of the drawers of the desk were empty, save for stationery. One contained a bunch of letters, tied up with blue ribbon—these, on examination, proved to be letters written by Miss Wickham, at school in England, to her guardian in Australia. Miss Wickham, present while Mr. Pawle and Viner searched, showed some emotion at the sight of them.
“I used to write to him once a month,” she said. “I had no idea that he had kept the letters, though!”
The two men went silently on with their search. But there was no further result. Ashton did not appear to have kept any letters or papers relative to his life or doings prior to his coming to England. Private documents of any sort he seemed to have none. And whatever business had taken him to Marketstoke, they could find no written reference to it; nor could they discover anything about the diamond of which Mr. Van Hoeren had spoken. They went upstairs to his bedroom and examined the drawers, cabinets and dressing-case—they found nothing.
“This is distinctly disappointing,” remarked Mr. Pawle when he and Viner returned to the little room. “I never knew a man who left such small evidence behind him. It’s quite evident to me that there’s nothing whatever in this house that’s going to be of any use to us. I wonder if he rented a box at any of the safe-deposit places? He must have had documents of some sort.”
“In that case, we should surely have found a key, and perhaps a receipt for the rent of the box,” suggested Viner. “I should have thought he’d have had a safe in his own house,” he added, “but we don’t hear of one.”
Mr. Pawle looked round the room, as if suspicious that Ashton might have hidden papers in the stuffing of the sofa or the easy-chair.
“I wonder if there’s anything in that,” he said suddenly. “It looks like a receptacle of some sort.”
Viner turned and saw the old lawyer pointing to a curious Japanese cabinet which stood in the middle of the marble mantelpiece—the only really notable ornament in the room. Mr. Pawle laid hold of it and uttered a surprised exclamation. “That’s a tremendous weight for so small a thing!” he said. “Feel it!”
Viner took hold of the cabinet—an affair of some eighteen inches in height and twelve in depth—and came to the conclusion that it was heavily weighted with lead. He lifted it down to the desk, giving it a slight shake.
“I took it for a cigar cabinet,” he remarked. “How does it open? Have you a key that will fit it?”
But upon examination there was no keyhole, and nothing to show how the door was opened.
“I see what this is,” said Viner, after looking closely over the cabinet, back, front and sides. “It opens by a trick—a secret. Probably you press something somewhere and the door flies open. But—where?”
“Try,” counselled Mr. Pawle. “There’s something
