Page:The Middle of Things - Fletcher (1922).djvu/220

 Pawle. "But it may be a tougher job than we think for. It would have been a tremendous help if Ashton had only mentioned a name to you."

"Sorry, but he didn't," said Mr. Perkwite. "You feel," he continued after a moment's silence, "you feel that this affair of the Ellingham succession lies at the root of the Ashton mystery—that he was really murdered by somebody who wanted to get possession of those papers?"

"And to remain sole repository of the secret," declared Mr. Pawle. "Isn't it established that beyond yourself and this unknown man nobody but Ashton knew the secret?"

"There is another matter, though," remarked Viner. He turned to the visitor. "You said that you and Ashton became very friendly and confidential during your stay in Marseilles. Pray, did he never show you anything of a valuable nature which he carried in his pocketbook?"

The barrister's keen eyes suddenly lighted up with recollection.

"Yes!" he exclaimed. "Now you come to suggest it, he did! A diamond!"

"Ah!" said Mr. Pawle. "So you saw that!"

"Yes, I saw it," assented Mr. Perkwite. "He showed it to me as a sort of curiosity—a stone which had some romantic history attaching to it. But I was not half as much interested in that as in the other affair."

"All the same," remarked Mr. Pawle, "that diamond is worth some fifty or sixty thousand pounds, Perkwite—and it's missing!"