“Mr. Ashton gave it to me, a few weeks ago,” answered Miss Wickham. “He said it had belonged to my father.”
The old lawyer bent nearer, looked more closely at the locket, and got up.
“Elegant old thing!” he said. “Not made yesterday, that! Well, ladies, you will see me, for this very sad occasion”—he waved a hand at the wreath of flowers—“tomorrow. In the meantime, if there is anything you want done, our young friend here is close at hand. Just now, however, I want him.”
“Viner,” observed Pawle when they had left the house, “it’s very odd how unobservant some people are! Now, there’s that woman we’ve just left, Mrs. Killenhall, who says that she’s well up in her Debrett, and her Burke—and there, seen by her many a time, is that locket which Miss Wickham is wearing, and she’s never noticed it! Never, I mean, noticed what’s on it. Why, I saw it—and its significance—instantly, just now, which was the first time I’d seen it!”
“What is it that’s on it?” asked Viner.
“After we came back from Marketstoke,” replied Mr. Pawle, “I looked up the Cave-Gray family and their peerage. That locket bears their device and motto. The device is a closed fist, grasping a handful of blades of wheat; the motto is ‘Have and Hold.’ Viner, as sure as fate, that girl’s father was the missing Lord Marketstoke, and Ashton knew the secret! I’m convinced of it—I’m positive of it. And now see the extraordinary position in which we’re all placed. Ashton’s dead, and there isn’t one scrap of paper to show what it was that he really knew. Nothing—not one written line!”
“Because, as I said before, he was murdered for his papers,” affirmed Viner. “I’m sure of that as you are of the rest.”
“I dare say you’re right,” agreed Mr. Pawle. “But, as I’ve said before, that presupposes that Ashton told somebody the secret. Now—who? Was it the man he was with in Paris? And if so, who is that man? But it’s useless speculating. I’ve made up my mind to a certain course, Viner. Tomorrow, after the funeral, I’m going to call on the present Lord Ellingham—his town house is in Hertford Street, and I know he’s in town—and ask him if he has heard anything of a mysterious nature relating to his long-missing uncle. We may hear something—you come with me.”
Next day, toward the middle of the afternoon, Mr. Pawle and Viner got out of a taxicab in Park Lane and walked down Hertford Street, the old lawyer explaining the course he was about to take.
“This is a young man—not long come of age,” he said. “He’ll be quite well acquainted, however, with the family history, and if anything’s happened lately, I dare say I can get him to talk. He—What is it?”
Viner had suddenly gripped his companion’s arm and pulled him to a halt. He was looking ahead—at the house at which they were about to call. And there, just being shown out by a footman, was the man whom he had seen at the old-fashioned tavern in Notting Hill, and with him a tall, good-looking man whom he had never seen before.
XV
The Present Holder
Mr. Pawle turned sharply on his companion as Viner pulled him up. He saw the direction of Viner’s suddenly arrested gaze and looked from him to the two men who had now walked down the steps of the house and were advancing towards them.
“What is it?” he asked. “Those fellows are coming away from Lord Ellingham’s house. You seem to know them?”
“One of them,” murmured Viner. “The clean-shaven man. Look at him!”
The two men came on in close, evidently absorbed conversation, passed Mr. Pawle and Viner without as much as a glance at them, and went along in the direction of Park Lane.
“Well?” demanded Mr. Pawle.
“The clean-shaven man is the man I told you of—the man who was in conversation with Ashton at that tavern in Notting Hill the night Ashton was murdered,” answered Viner. “The other man I don’t know.”
Mr. Pawle turned and looked after the retreating figures.
“You’re sure of that?” he asked.
“Certain!” replied Viner. “I should know him anywhere.”
Mr. Pawle came to another halt, glancing first at the two men, now well up the street, and then at the somewhat sombre front of Ellingham House.
“Now, this is an extraordinary thing, Viner!” he exclaimed. “There’s the man who, you say, was with Ashton not very long before he came to his end, and we find him coming away—presumably—from Lord Ellingham, certainly from Lord Ellingham’s house! What on earth does it mean? And I wonder who the man is?”
“What I’d like to know,” said Viner, “is—who is the other man? But as you say, it is certainly a very curious thing that we should find the first man evidently in touch with Lord Ellingham—considering our recent discoveries. But—what are you going to do?”
“Going in here,” affirmed Mr. Pawle, “to the fountainhead. We may get to know something. Have you a card?”
The footman who took the cards looked doubtfully at them and their presenters.
“His Lordship is just going out,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “I don’t know—”
Mr. Pawle pointed to the name of his firm at the corner of his card.
“I think Lord Ellingham will see me,” he said. “Tell his lordship I shall not detain him many minutes if he will be kind enough to give me an interview.”
The man went away—to return in a few minutes and to lead the callers into a room at the rear of the hall, wherein, his back to the fire, his look and attitude one of puzzled surprise, stood a very young man, dressed in the height of fashion, who, as his servant had said, was obviously just ready to go out. Viner, remembering what had brought him and Mr. Pawle there, looked at Lord Ellingham closely—he seemed to be frank, ingenuous, and decidedly youthful. But there was something decidedly practical and businesslike in his
