“Was placed there by Miss Devan,” replied The Thinking Machine. “It was a part of the general scheme to hopelessly implicate Stockton. She is a clever woman. She showed that when she produced the fountain pen, having carefully filled it with blue instead of black ink.”
“What was in the locked vault?”
“That I can only conjecture. It is not impossible that the inventor had only part of the formula he so closely guarded written on the Bible leaf and the other part of it in that vault, together with other valuable documents.
“I may add that the letters which John Stockton had were not forged. They were written without Miss Devan’s knowledge. There was a vast difference in the handwriting of the cipher letter which she wrote and those others which the father wrote.
“Of course it is obvious that the missing will is now, or was, in Miss Devan’s possession. How she got it, I don’t know. With that out of the way and this cipher unravelled apparently proving the son’s guilt, at least half, possibly all, of the estate would have gone to her.”
Hatch lighted a cigarette thoughtfully and was silent for a moment.
“What will be the end of it all?” he asked. “Of course, I understand that John Stockton will recover.”
“The result will be that the world will lose a great scientific achievement—the secret of hardening copper, which Pomeroy Stockton had rediscovered. I think it safe to say that Miss Devan has burned every scrap of this.”
“But what will become of her?”
“She knows nothing of this. I believe she will disappear before Stockton recovers. He wouldn’t prosecute anyway. Remember he loved her once.”
John Stockton was convalescent two weeks later, when a nurse in the City Hospital placed an envelope in his hands. He opened it and a little cloud of ashes filtered through his fingers onto the bed clothing. He sank back on his pillow, weeping.
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