Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/150

 chance long since to secure them. I'm like to find them in their hands."

"Excepting that they might not know their value," said Charles Matthewson.

Cranston looked at the speaker quizzically.

"I don't know about your Mr. McManus," he said. "He's a lawyer. But as to Trafford, I can answer. If he's had his hands on those papers, he knows their value."

"I don't think," said Hunter, after the detective had received his instructions and gone, "that my brother would quite approve time spent in discovering Wing's mother. He doesn't believe that affair had anything to do with the murder."

"How can any sensible man?" Henry Matthewson demanded impatiently; "but we don't know where the enquiry is going to land us nor what help we may want before we're through. If the judge's statement is true, this woman has a high position to lose and has great influence with her husband, who holds a strong place politically. It can't be a matter of much trouble to unravel that part of the affair, and it may give us some one whom we can