THE SAFE OPENED
BEFORE Captain Fortescue left his father's room that morning, he took
up the bunch of keys on which the old man's eyes had rested with such
anxious care, and which were still lying on a small table near his bed.
He slipped them at once into his pocket, for he did not know who might
come into that room, and he wished to feel assured that the safe would
not be tampered with.
But, eager though he was to discover what secret the letter addressed
to him contained, it was not until late in the day that he went into
the room of death, that he might open the safe, and find the envelope
which his father had described to him. He had been much moved by his
father's death; and, in his intense refinement of feeling, he shrank
from too quickly bringing to light that which might possibly reveal to
him something in his father's past life, which would bring discredit on
his memory, and might cause him to think less kindly and tenderly of
the dead.
It was the old man's intense anxiety that the paper should not be
read in his lifetime, which led Captain Fortescue to surmise that the
contents were in some way not creditable to him.
But in the evening, when all arrangements for the funeral were made,
and the servants were below at their supper, he crept with a candle in
his hand into the room of death. He felt almost as if he were a thief,
as he crossed the floor, and passed the silent form on the bed.
His father had never allowed any one to open that safe. In the days of
his childhood he had been accustomed to look at it with awe and wonder,
as he speculated on the mysteries it might contain. Now—he was going to
open it, and the hand that had so carefully guarded its contents was
lying cold and lifeless on the bed. He felt almost as if he would hear
his father's protesting voice, as he fitted the key in the lock. He
even glanced back at the bed, as if to assure himself that there was no
movement there.
The lock turned easily, and the massive iron door flew open. As he
looked inside, he saw several packets of deeds tied up with red tape,
a pile of account books, and countless old chequebooks. But he did not
stop to look carefully at what the safe contained, his eyes sought
eagerly for the will, for had not his father told him that, underneath
that will, he would find the secret information that he wished him to
receive?
[Illustration: HE TURNED ROUND AND SAW WATSON STANDING BEHIND HIM.]
Yes, the will was there; he saw the large envelope on which was
written, in clear legal copper-plate characters, "Last Will and
Testament of Joseph Fortescue." But the will had little interest for
him now. Of what avail to be told that so many thousands had been
bequeathed to him, when he knew that those thousands did not exist, but
had been swamped in the ruinous flooding of that distant mine? As his
poor old father had said, the will was not worth the paper on which it
was written. He took it up with beating heart, and looked underneath it.
Yes, there was the letter; he could see his father's crooked,
illiterate writing upon it—he could read the words—
"For my son,
To be opened after my death."
He was just slipping it into his pocket, when he heard a movement
in the room. Was the dead man rising, to make a protest against his
reading its contents?
He turned round and saw Watson standing behind him; how she had crept
into the room without his hearing her he could not imagine.
"What do you want, Watson?"
"I was passing the door, sir, and saw a light, so came in to see that
all was right. You've soon found your way to the safe, sir!"
Captain Fortescue took no notice of this insolent remark; he was not
going to give vent to his feeling of anger in the chamber of death; he
knew that he would have another opportunity of letting Watson know what
he thought of her behaviour to him. So, without deigning to reply, he
locked the safe, and taking the will and the keys in his hand he went
out of the room.
Crossing the landing, he entered his own bedroom, and closed and locked
the door. Now he was safe from intrusion and from Watson's prying gaze.
He put his candle on the table, drew a chair near it, and sat down to
open the letter. He wondered at himself that he could wait even to do
this; but he had a nervous dread of the revelation he was about to
receive, and, at the last moment, he actually feared to look upon that
which before he had been so anxious to see.
He tore open the long envelope, which was securely fastened at one end,
and drew out a sheet of foolscap paper.
He opened it and spread it before him; he turned over the page; he
looked at the back of it.
Horror of horrors! Had sudden blindness fallen upon him? Was the loss
of sight to be added to all his other losses? He could see nothing—not
a single word appeared to be written on any one of the four pages. So
far as he could see, it was simply a blank sheet, unused, unsoiled,
utterly void of any information on any subject whatever. He held it
up to the light; he tried to imagine that he saw secret marks in the
tracing of the paper; he turned the pages over and over, but he could
find nothing but emptiness—a plain, white surface which seemed to mock
his scrutiny.
Surely he had brought the wrong envelope! But no, there was the address
on the outside in his father's childish handwriting:
"For my son,
To be opened after my death."
Could the old man have made a mistake, and have placed the wrong
document in the cover?
He went back to the room of death, carefully locking the door this
time, and he made a thorough investigation of the contents of the safe.
But he found nothing whatever to repay his search, no other envelope,
no other letter—nothing at all but old accounts and a few business
papers.
He stood by the bed and looked at his dead father's face, and longed
unutterably to ask him what he had done with the information which
he had so much wished him to receive. But the lips were closed—the
voice was still—and no message came from the other world to guide and
direct him in his time of bewilderment and consternation. Fortescue
went to his bedroom again, and once more examined the sheet of paper.
Then a bright thought seized him. Could it be that his father, fearing
lest the document should fall into other hands, had written it in
invisible ink? Was it possible that, if he only knew how to deal with
it, he might be able to fill those blank pages with words of weight
and importance? He remembered, when he was a boy, having a bottle of
ink of that kind, which made no mark upon the paper unless heat were
brought to bear upon it. Perhaps his father had remembered it also,
and, recollecting the fact that he had known the secret as a boy, he
had adopted this means of making his letter even more private, and had
thus considerably lessened the liability of its being deciphered by any
eyes excepting those of his son.
Captain Fortescue therefore went into the library, and carefully held
the foolscap sheet to the fire. But, beyond a slight mark of scorching
upon one page, it remained unchanged and exactly as he had found it.
Then it crossed his mind that possibly there might be chemicals, which,
if applied to paper which had been prepared in a certain way, would
bring to light hidden writing and make it legible. He thought he had
read of something of the kind being used in time of war, in the place
of the ordinary cipher. Possibly this was the explanation which he was
seeking. He rang the bell, and Elkington answered it.
"What time do the shops close, Elkington?"
"Eight o'clock, sir."
The captain looked at his watch. "A quarter past nine! Too late, then!"
"What am I thinking of?" said the old butler. "Of course, it's Saturday
night. They won't close till ten, or eleven, maybe."
"That's right. Can you send for a cab for me, Elkington?"
"Is it anything I can do, sir?"
"No, Elkington, thank you. I'm afraid not."
"Do you want the cab at once, sir?"
"Yes, at once. The sooner the better."
The old man hurried off to do his young master's bidding, and Kenneth,
after placing the precious sheet of paper carefully in the breast
pocket of his coat, stood waiting in the hall until the cab arrived. He
saw Watson come to the top of the stairs and look down, as if she were
watching his movements. Then she came into the hall.
"Are you going out, sir? So late, too?" she added.
The cab drove up at this moment, so that he did not deem it necessary
to answer, but he saw her craning her neck forward, that she might
catch the direction that he gave to the cabman. Consequently, he
altered what he had intended to say, merely naming the part of the town
to which he wished to be driven.
The streets of Sheffield were brilliantly lighted as he drove through
them; crowds of working people were thronging the main thoroughfares
and filling the various shops. But the large chemist's, at which he
told the cabman to stop, was practically empty, and the assistants were
preparing to close for the night.
"Is Mr. Lofthouse here?" he inquired of one of them.
"He is in his private room, sir. I'll call him. You are only just in
time to catch him!"
"Do you think I could speak to him for a few minutes on a private
matter?"
"I'll ask him, sir."
In a few moments Kenneth found himself seated beside the old chemist,
near the fast-dying embers of the fire in the room behind the shop. He
brought the sheet of paper from his pocket and explained his errand. He
told Mr. Lofthouse that this paper contained, at least so he believed,
information of grave importance to him, and that, whilst it was
impossible for him to read it at present, he suspected and hoped that
the action of some chemical might be sufficient to bring the writing
upon it to light.
The chemist looked carefully at his visitor. Was he a lunatic who
was labouring under some strong delusion, or had he good reason for
imagining that those blank pages really contained hidden writing?
It struck him as a strange time for such a visit, and that made him
inclined to be suspicious of the sanity of the man before him. But the
Captain's calm, quiet manner impressed him favourably, and when he
presently took Mr. Lofthouse into his confidence, by telling him that a
relative of his who had lately died had informed him on his death-bed
that this paper contained information which it was important for him to
receive, he became at once interested and at the same time eager and
ready to help.
He inquired whether Captain Fortescue would be willing to entrust the
paper to his care, that he might be able to experiment upon it; but
when he found that Kenneth did not like the idea of doing so, inasmuch
as the information which he supposed the foolscap sheet to contain
was of a private nature and intended only for his own perusal, Mr.
Lofthouse at once dismissed his assistants, locked the shop door, took
his visitor into the laboratory, and proceeded to try the effect of
various chemicals upon the paper which he had brought.
For more than an hour the two men worked away on the mysterious
pages, but at the end of that time the old chemist declared his firm
conviction that the captain was in some way mistaken, for that nothing
whatever had been written upon the sheet of foolscap. He could find no
evidence of the paper having been chemically treated, and he felt sure
that, in some way or other, that paper had been placed in the envelope
in the place of the paper which Captain Fortescue had expected to find
there.
It was late at night when Kenneth returned home; he was more tired
than he realized, until he found himself in his own room, and he slept
soundly for the first time since his arrival in Sheffield.
Then followed the long quiet Sunday, during which he sat in the
darkened library, and thought of the changes that week had brought into
his life, and of the uncertain and difficult future that lay ahead of
him.
The funeral was fixed for Tuesday; there were no relations to summon,
for he knew of none. He never in his life remembered seeing any one
except his father who could claim any relationship to him, however
distant. And now that only relation of his was gone, and he was left
entirely alone in the world, so far as any natural tie was concerned.
Not only so, but he realized that that week he had lost all his former
friends. The schoolfellows at Eton, the men he had known at Sandhurst,
the friends he had made since he had entered the army, would now be
parted from him by a social gulf which neither he nor they would be
able to cross. He would have to sever his connection with them all;
leaving the army, he would leave the link which bound him to them. He
must begin life anew, and it must be, in future, the life of a man
dependent upon his own exertions for his daily bread. How he was to
enter upon this life, how that daily bread was to be obtained, he had
no idea; what path he could cut out for himself in the hard rock of
circumstances which blocked his way, he could not imagine. Nor did he
know to whom to apply for advice; his friends were moving in such a
totally different sphere that he did not see how they could help him.
He felt utterly and entirely alone.
But, at that moment, there suddenly flashed across him four lines which
he had learnt to love in brighter and happier days, but which now came
back to him with fresh meaning, as they seemed to express the inmost
feeling of his heart:
"I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see:
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
And follow Thee."