Chapter Thirteen. Burton Blair’s Secret is Revealed.

“Whatever Burton Blair told me was in strictest confidence,” I exclaimed, resenting the fellow’s intrusion, yet secretly glad to have that opportunity of meeting him and of endeavouring to ascertain his intentions.

“Of course,” answered Dawson with a smile, his one shining eye blinking at me from behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “But his friendliness and gratitude never led him sufficiently far to reveal to you his secret. No. I think if you will pardon me, Mr Greenwood, it is useless for us to fence in this manner, having regard to the fact that I know rather more of Burton Blair and his past life than you ever have done.”

“Admitted,” I said. “Blair was always very reticent. He set himself to solve some mystery and achieved his object.”

“And by doing so gained over two millions sterling which people still regard as a mystery. There is, however, no mystery about those heaps of securities lying at his banks, nor about the cash with which he purchased them,” he laughed. “It was good Bank of England notes and solid gold coin of the realm. But now he’s dead, poor fellow; it has all come to an end,” he added with a slightly reflective air.

“But his secret still exists,” Reggie remarked. “He has bequeathed it to my friend here.”

“What!” snapped the man with one eye, turning to me in sheer amazement. “He has left his secret with you?”

He seemed utterly staggered by Reggie’s words, and I noted the evil glitter in his glance.

“He has. The secret is now mine,” I answered; although I did not tell him that the mysterious little wash-leather bag was missing.

“But don’t you know what that involves, man?” he cried, and having risen from his chair he now stood before me, his thin fingers twitching with excitement.

“No, I don’t,” I said, laughing in an endeavour to treat his words lightly. “He has left me as a legacy the little bag he always carried, together with certain instructions which I shall endeavour to act upon.”

“Very well,” he snarled. “Do just as you think fit, only I would rather you were left possessor of that secret than me—that’s all.”

His dismay and annoyance apparently knew no bounds. He strove hard to conceal it, but without avail. It was therefore at once plain that there was some very strong motive why the secret should not be allowed to fall into my possession. Yet his belief that the little sachet had already passed into my hands negatived my theory that this mysterious person was in any way connected with Burton Blair’s death.

“Believe me, Mr Dawson,” I said quite calmly, “I entertain no fear of the result of my friend’s kind generosity. Indeed, I can see no ground for any apprehension. Blair discovered a mystery which, by dint of long patience and almost superhuman effort, he succeeded in solving, and I presume that, possibly from a feeling of some little gratitude for the small help my friend and myself were able to render him, he has left his secret in my keeping.”

The man was silent for several moments with that single irritating eye fixed upon me immovably.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at last with impatience. “I see that you are in utter ignorance. Perhaps it is as well that you should remain so.” Then he added, “But let us talk of another matter—of the future.”

“Well?” I inquired, “and what of the future?”

“I am appointed secretary to Mabel Blair, and the controller of her affairs.”

“And I promised Burton Blair upon his deathbed to guard and protect the young lady’s interests,” I said, in a cold, calm voice.

“Then may I ask, now we are upon the subject, whether you entertain matrimonial intentions towards her?”

“No, you shall not ask me anything of the kind,” I blazed forth. “Your question is a piece of outrageous impertinence, sir.”

“Come, come, Gilbert,” Reggie exclaimed.

“There’s surely no need to quarrel.”

“None whatever,” declared Mr Richard Dawson, with a supercilious air. “The question is quite simple, and one which I, as the future controller of the young lady’s fortune, have a perfect right to ask. I understand,” he added, “that she has grown to be very attractive and popular.”

“Your question is one which I refuse to answer,” I declared with considerable warmth. “I might just as well demand of you the reason why you have been lying low in Italy all these years, or why you received letters addressed to a back street in Florence.”

His jaw dropped, his brows slightly contracted, and I saw my remark caused him some apprehension.

“Oh! and how are you aware that I have lived in Italy?”

But in order to mislead him I smiled mysteriously and replied—

“The man who holds Burton Blair’s secret also holds certain secrets concerning his friends.” Then I added meaningly, “The Ceco is well known in Florence and in Lucca.”

His face blanched, his thin, sinewy fingers moved again, and the twitching at the corners of his mouth showed how intensely excited he had become at that mention of his nickname.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “He has played me false, then, after all—he has told you that—eh? Very well!” And he laughed the strange hollow laugh of a man who contemplates revenge. “Very well, gentlemen. I see my position in this affair is that of an intruder.”

“To tell you the truth, sir, it is,” exclaimed Reggie. “You were unknown until the dead man’s will was read, and I do not anticipate that the young lady will care to be compelled to employ a stranger.”

“A stranger!” he laughed, with a haughty touch of sarcasm. “Dick Dawson a stranger! No, sir, you will find that to her I am no stranger. On the other hand you will, I think, discover that instead of resenting my interference, the young lady will rather welcome it. Wait and see,” he added, with a strangely confident air. “To-morrow I intend to call upon Mr Leighton, and to take up my duties as secretary to the daughter of the late Burton Blair, millionaire,” and laying stress on the final word, he laughed again defiantly in our faces.

He was not a gentleman. I decided that on the instant he had entered the room. Outwardly his bearing was that of one who had mixed with respectable people, but it was only a veneer of polish, for when he grew excited he was just as uncouth as the bluff seafarer who had so suddenly expired. His twang was pronouncedly Cockney, even though it was said he had lived in Italy so many years that he had almost become an Italian. A man who is a real born Londoner can never disguise his nasal “n’s,” even though he live his life at the uttermost ends of the earth. We had both quickly detected that the stranger, though of rather slim built, was unusually muscular. And this was the man who had had those frequent secret interviews with the grave-eyed Capuchin, Fra Antonio.

That he stood in no fear of us had been shown by the bold and open manner in which he had called, and the frankness with which he had spoken. He was entirely confident in his own position, and was inwardly chuckling at our own ignorance.

“You speak of me as a stranger, gentlemen,” he said, buttoning his overcoat after a short pause and taking up his stick. “I suppose I am to-night—but I shall not be so to-morrow. Very soon, I hope, we shall learn to know one another better, then perhaps you will trust me a little further than you do this evening. Recollect that I have for many years been the dead man’s most intimate friend.”

It was on the point of my tongue to remark that the reason of the strange clause in the will was because of poor Burton’s fear of him, and that it had been inserted under compulsion, but I fortunately managed to restrain myself and to wish the fellow “Good-evening” with some show of politeness.

“Well, I’m hanged, Gilbert,” cried Reggie, when the one-eyed man had gone. “The situation grows more interesting and complicated every moment. Leighton has a tough customer to deal with, that’s very evident.”

“Yes,” I sighed. “He has the best of us all round, because Blair evidently took him completely into his confidence.”

“Burton treated us shabbily, that’s my opinion, Greenwood!” blurted forth my friend, selecting a fresh cigar, and biting off the end viciously.

“He left his secret to me remember.”

“He may have destroyed it after making the will,” my friend suggested.

“No, it is either hidden or has been stolen—which is not at all plain. For my own part, I consider that the theory of murder is gradually becoming dispelled. If he had any suspicion that he had been the victim of foul play, he surely would have made some remark to us before he died. Of that I feel absolutely convinced.”

“Very probably,” he remarked, rather dubiously, however. “But what we have now to discover is whether that little bag he wore is still in existence.”

“The man Dawson was evidently in England before poor Blair’s death. It may have passed into his possession,” I suggested.

“He would, in all probability, endeavour to get hold of it,” Reggie agreed. “We must establish where he was and what he was doing on that day when Blair was so mysteriously seized in the train. I don’t like the fellow, apart from his alias and the secrecy of friendship with Blair. He means mischief, old chap—distinct mischief. I saw it in that one eye of his. Remember what he said about Blair giving him away. It struck me that he contemplates revenge upon poor Mabel.”

“He’d better not try to injure her,” I exclaimed fiercely. “I’ve my promise to keep to poor Burton, and I’ll keep it—by Heaven, I will!—to the very letter. She sha’n’t fall into the hands of that adventurer, I’ll take good care.”

“She’s in fear of him already. I wonder why?”

“Unfortunately she won’t tell me. He probably holds some guilty secret of the dead man’s, the truth of which, if exposed, might, for all we know, have the effect of placing Mabel herself outside the pale of good society.”

Seton grunted, lolled back in his chair, and gazed thoughtfully into the fire.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, after a brief silence. “I wonder whether that is so?”

On the following morning, as we were seated at breakfast, a note from Mabel was brought by a boy-messenger, asking me to come round to Grosvenor Square at once. Therefore without delay I swallowed my coffee, struggled into my overcoat, and a quarter of an hour later entered the bright morning-room where the dead man’s daughter, her face rather flushed by excitement, stood awaiting me.

“What’s the matter?” I inquired quickly as I took her hand, fearing that the man she loathed had already called upon her.

“Nothing serious,” she laughed. “I have only a piece of very good news for you.”

“For me—what?”

Without answering, she placed on the table a small plain silver cigarette-box, upon one corner of the lid of which was engraved the cipher double B, that monogram that was upon all Blair’s plate, carriages, harness and other possessions.

“See what is inside that,” she exclaimed, pointing to the box before her, and smiling sweetly with profound satisfaction.

I eagerly took it in my hands and raising the lid, peered within.

“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.