Page:The Talleyrand maxim, by J.S. Fletcher (IA talleyrandmaximb00flet).pdf/46

 "They're in that little room aside of his bed-chamber, Mestur Collingwood," replied the housekeeper. "I laid 'em all there, on the clothes-press, just as they were taken off of him, by Lawyer Eldrick's orders—he said they hadn't been examined, and wasn't to be, till you came. Nobody whatever's touched 'em since."

Collingwood went upstairs and into the little room—a sort of box-room opening out of that in which the old man lay. There were the clothes; he went through the pockets of every garment. He found such things as keys, a purse, loose money, a memorandum book, a bookseller's catalogue or two, two or three letters of a business sort—but there was no big folded paper, covered with writing, such as Jabey Naylor had described.

The mention of that paper had excited Collingwood's curiosity. He rapidly summed up what he had learned. His grandfather had found a paper, closely written upon, in a book which had been the property of John Mallathorpe, deceased. The discovery had surprised him, for he had given voice to an exclamation of what was evidently astonishment. He had put the paper in his pocket. Then he had written a letter—to Mrs. Mallathorpe of Normandale Grange. When his shop-boy had posted that letter, he himself had gone out—to his solicitor. What, asked Collingwood, was the reasonable presumption? The old man had gone to Eldrick to show him the paper which he had found.

He lingered in the little room for a few minutes, thinking. No one but Pratt had been with Antony Bartle at the time of his seizure and sudden death. What sort of a fellow was Pratt? Was he honest? Was his word