"What!" I cried aloud, almost beside myself with joy. "It can't really
be?"
"Yes," she laughed. "It is."
And then, with trembling fingers, I drew forth from the box the actual
object that had been bequeathed to me, the little well-worn bag of
chamois leather, the small sachet about the size of a man's palm,
attached to which was a thin but very strong golden chain for suspending
it around the neck.
"I found it this morning quite accidentally, just as it is, in a secret
drawer in the old bureau in my father's dressing-room," she explained.
"He must have placed it there for security before leaving for Scotland."
I held it in my hand utterly stupefied, yet with the most profound
gratification. Did not the very fact that Blair had taken it off and
placed it in that box rather than risk wearing it during that journey to
the North prove that he had gone in fear of an attempt being made to
obtain its possession? Nevertheless, the curious little object
bequeathed to me under such strange conditions was now actually in my
hand, a flat, neatly-sewn bag of wash-leather that was black with age
and wear, about half-an-inch thick, and containing something flat and
hard.
Within was concealed the great secret, the knowledge of which had raised
Burton Blair from a homeless seafarer into affluence. What it could be,
neither Mabel nor I could for a moment imagine.
Both of us were breathless, equally eager to ascertain the truth.
Surely never in the life of any man was there presented a more
interesting or a more tantalising problem.
In silence she took up a pair of small buttonhole scissors from the
little writing-table in the window and handed them to me.
Then, my hand trembling with excitement, I inserted the point into the
end of the leather packet and made a long sharp cut the whole of its
length, but what fell out upon the carpet next instant caused us both to
utter loud exclamations of surprise.
Burton Blair's most treasured possession, the Great Secret which he had
carried on his person all those years and through all those wanderings,
now at last revealed, proved utterly astounding.