"Tell him to be careful--to be wary of--the trap?"
Those dying words of Sir Henry's rang ever in his son's ears.
That afternoon, as Raife stood bowed in silence before the body of his
beloved father, his mind was full of strange wonderings.
What was the nature of the dead man's secret? Who was the woman to whom
he had referred a few moments before he expired?
The young fellow gazed upon the grey shrunken face he had loved so well,
and his eyes became dimmed by tears. Only a week before they had been
in London together, and he had dined with his father at the Carlton
Club, and they had afterwards gone to a theatre.
The baronet was then in the best of health and spirits. A keen
sportsman, and an ardent golfer, he had been essentially an out-door
man. Yet he now lay there still and dead, killed by an assassin's
bullet. Raife's mother was inconsolable and he had decided that it was
best for him to keep apart from her for the present.
To his friend, Mutimer, he had sent a wire announcing the tragic news,
and had, by telephone, also informed Mr Kellaway, the family lawyer,
whose offices were in Bedford Row, London. On hearing the astounding
truth, Mr Kellaway--to whom Raife had spoken personally--had announced
his intention of coming at once to Tunbridge Wells.
At six o'clock he arrived in the car which Raife had sent for him--a
tall, elderly, clean-shaven man in respectful black.
"Now, Mr Kellaway," said Raife, when they were alone together in the
library, and the young baronet had explained what had occurred. "You
have been my father's very intimate friend, as well as his solicitor for
many years. I want to ask you a simple question. Are you aware that my
father held a secret--some secret of the past?"
"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 assure 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-fashioned 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 assassin?" 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, assisted 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
assumption that he had something to hide from me, wouldn't it?"
"By jove, yes," was the young man's response. "I had never thought of
that! He wished to preserve his secret until his death. I wonder if
the will reveals anything?"
"Perhaps--who knows?"
Raife remained silent. He was still carefully removing the papers from
the steel inner drawer of the safe--a drawer which had been overlooked
when he had made his investigation. The papers were mostly memoranda
regarding financial transactions, sales and purchases of land, and other
matters. Among them were a number of old letters, mostly signed by
George Mountjoy, who had been member for South Gloucestershire, and his
father's particular crony. He had died a year ago, and Sir Henry had
keenly felt the loss of his life-long friend.
They had been as brothers, and old Mr Mountjoy was frequently a guest
at Aldborough for months at a stretch, and treated quite as one of the
family.
Letter after letter he turned over aimlessly, reading scraps here and
there. They were strange letters, which showed a great bond of
friendship existing between the two men. In some, Mountjoy asked Sir
Henry's advice regarding his most intimate and private affairs, and in
others he gave the baronet his aid, and made suggestions regarding his
line of action in many matters.
One struck him as very strange. Dated from the Hotel Angst, in
Bordighera, over three years ago, it contained the following passage:
"As you have asked my advice upon the most secret page of our history,
my dear Henry, I am most decidedly and emphatically of opinion that it
will be best to allow them to remain in entire ignorance. He should,
however, be diplomatically warned lest the pitfall you fear be placed
in his path--as no doubt it will be sooner or later.
"Under no circumstances whatever would I alarm your wife by revealing
to her the truth. Remember the state of her health is delicate, and
undue anxiety would most probably shatter her nerves. No, remain
silent. Only you and I know the truth, and that it is our duty to
keep it strictly to ourselves.
"I know how it must gall you, and how helpless you must feel in the
strange, unheard-of circumstances. But I beg of you to regard the
threats as idle ones. For your safety I fear nothing, but for Raife
it is different. He should be warned, but not in a way to cause him
undue anxiety; only to impress upon him the need of shrewd precaution
against his enemies.
"I shall never divulge the truth, and you, my dear Henry, should still
preserve a calm and smiling face. Too well I know the extreme
difficulty of doing this; but remember there is not the least
suspicion of the truth abroad, and that most men in every walk of life
have ugly secrets which they would not care to expose to the light of
day.
"Your son, Raife, is in ignorance. Let him remain so, I beg of you.
The truth, if told, will only bring unhappiness upon you both. He is
young and fearless. Warn him against the trap that we, alas! know
will be set sooner or later. But further than that do not go. I
shall be back in London at the end of this month, and we can discuss
the situation further."
The remainder of the letter consisted mainly of Riviera gossip.
Raife stood staring at the sheet of grey note-paper, his brows knit in
wonder.
"What is it?" asked Kellaway, noticing the effect the letter had had
upon the young man.
"Read that," was his reply. "It shows that my suspicions were
well-grounded. My father had a secret--a secret which was known to no
one else besides his friend, George Mountjoy. Read it, Kellaway. It is
evident from that letter, and from the poor guv'nor's dying message
urging me to be careful, that I am in some strange, mysterious peril!
What can it be?"