have to consider you as my guardian,” and she laughed lightly, twisting her ring around her finger.
“Not as your legal guardian,” I answered. “Your father’s lawyers will, no doubt, act in that capacity, but rather as your protector and your friend.”
“Ah!” she replied sadly, “I suppose I shall require both, now that poor dad is dead.”
“I have been your friend for over five years, Mabel, and I hope you will still allow me to carry out my promise to your father,” I said, standing before her and speaking in deep earnestness.
“There must, however, at the outset be a clear and distinct understanding between us. Therefore permit me for one moment to speak to you candidly, as a man should to a woman who is his friend. You, Mabel, are young, and – well, you are, as you know, very good-looking – ”
“No, really, Mr Greenwood,” she cried, interrupting me and blushing at my compliment, “it is too bad of you. I’m sure – ”
“Hear me out, please,” I continued with mock severity. “You are young, you are very good-looking, and you are rich; you therefore possess the three necessary attributes which render a woman eligible in these modern days when sentiment is held of such little account. Well, people who will watch our intimate friendship will, with ill-nature, declare, no doubt, that I am seeking to marry you for your money. I am quite sure the world will say this, but what I want you to promise is to at once refute such a statement. I desire that you and I shall be firm friends, just as we have ever been, without any thought of affection. I may admire you – I confess, now, that I have always admired you – but with a man of my limited means love for you is entirely out of the question. Understand that I do not wish to presume upon the past, now that your father is dead and you are alone. Understand, too, from the very outset that I now give you the hand of firm friendship as I would give it to Reggie, my old schoolfellow and best friend, and that in future I shall safeguard your interests as though they were my own.” And I held out my hands to her.
For a moment she hesitated, for my words had apparently caused her the most profound surprise.
“Very well,” she faltered, glancing for an instant up to my face. “It is a bargain – if you wish it to be so.”
“I wish, Mabel, to carry out the promise I made to your father,” I said. “As you know, I am greatly indebted to him for much generosity, and I wish, therefore, as a mark of gratitude, to stand in his place and protect his daughter – yourself.”
“But were we not, in the first place, both indebted to you?” she said. “If it had not been for Mr Seton and yourself I might have wandered on until I died by the wayside.”
“For what was your father searching?” I asked. “He surely told you?”
“No, he never did. I am in entire ignorance of the reason of his three years of tramping up and down England. He had a distinct object, which he accomplished, but what it actually was he would never reveal to me.”
“It was, I suppose, in connexion with that document he always carried?”
“I believe it was,” was her response. Then she added, returning to her previous observations, “Why speak of your indebtedness to him, Mr Greenwood, when I know full well how you sold your best horse in order to pay my school fees at Bournemouth, and that you could not hunt that season in consequence? You denied yourself the only little pleasure you had, in order that I might be well cared for.”
“I forbid you to mention that again,” I said quickly. “Recollect we are now friends, and between friends there can be no question of indebtedness.”
“Then you must not talk of any little service my father rendered to you,” she laughed. “Come, now, I shall be unruly if you don’t keep to your part of the bargain!”
And so we were compelled at that juncture to cry quits, and we recommenced our friendship on a firm and perfectly well-defined basis.
Yet how strange it was! The beauty of Mabel Blair, as she lounged there before me in that magnificent home that was now hers, was surely sufficient to turn the head of any man who was not a Chancery Judge or a Catholic Cardinal – different indeed from the poor, half-starved girl whom I had first seen exhausted and fallen by the roadside in the winter gloom.
Chapter Five
In which the Mystery Becomes Considerably Increased
That the precious document, or whatever it was, sewn up in the wash-leather which the dead man had so carefully guarded through all those years was now missing was, in itself, a very suspicious circumstance, while Mabel’s vague but distinct apprehensions, which she either would not or could not define, now aroused my suspicions that Burton Blair had been the victim of foul play.
Immediately after leaving her I therefore drove to Bedford Row and held another consultation with Leighton, to whom I explained my grave fears.
“As I have already explained, Mr Greenwood,” responded the solicitor, leaning back in his padded chair and regarding me gravely through his glasses, “I believe that my client did not die a natural death. There was some mystery in his life, some strange romantic circumstance which, unfortunately, he never thought fit to confide to me. He held a secret, he told me, and by knowledge of that secret, he obtained his vast wealth. Only half an hour ago I made a rough calculation of the present value of his estate, and at the lowest, I believe it will be found to amount to over two and a half millions. The whole of this, I may tell you in confidence, goes unreservedly to his daughter, with the exception of several legacies, which include ten thousand each to Mr Seton and to yourself, two thousand to Mrs Percival, and some small sums to the servants. But,” he added, “there is a clause in the will which is very puzzling, and which closely affects yourself. As we both suspect foul play, I think I may as well at once show it to you without waiting for my unfortunate client’s burial and the formal reading of his will.”
Then he rose, and from a big black deed box lettered “Burton Blair, Esquire,” he took out the dead man’s will, and, opening it, showed me a passage which read: —
Ten: “I give and bequeath to Gilbert Greenwood of The Cedars, Helpstone, the small bag of chamois leather that will be found upon me at the time of my death, in order that he may profit by what is contained therein, and as recompense for certain valuable services rendered to me. Let him recollect always this rhyme —
”‘Henry the Eighth was a knave to his queens, He’d, one short of seven – and nine or ten scenes!’
“And let him well and truly preserve the secret from every man, just as I have done.”
That was all. A strange clause surely! Burton Blair had, after all, actually bequeathed his secret to me, the secret that had brought him his colossal wealth! Yet it was already lost – probably stolen by his enemies.
“That’s a curious doggerel,” the solicitor smiled. “But poor Blair possessed but little literary culture, I fear. He knew more about the sea than poetry. Yet, after all, it seems a tantalising situation that you should be left the secret of the source of my client’s enormous fortune, and that it should be stolen from you in this manner.”
“We had, I think, better consult the police, and explain our suspicions,” I said, in bitter chagrin that the chamois sachet should have fallen into other hands.
“I entirely agree with you, Mr Greenwood. We will go together to Scotland Yard and get them to institute inquiries. If Mr Blair was actually murdered, then
