CHAPTER V

THE SAFE OPENED

BEFORE Captain Fortescue left his father's room that morning, he took up the bunch of keys on which the old man's eyes had rested with such anxious care, and which were still lying on a small table near his bed. He slipped them at once into his pocket, for he did not know who might come into that room, and he wished to feel assured that the safe would not be tampered with.

But, eager though he was to discover what secret the letter addressed to him contained, it was not until late in the day that he went into the room of death, that he might open the safe, and find the envelope which his father had described to him. He had been much moved by his father's death; and, in his intense refinement of feeling, he shrank from too quickly bringing to light that which might possibly reveal to him something in his father's past life, which would bring discredit on his memory, and might cause him to think less kindly and tenderly of the dead.

It was the old man's intense anxiety that the paper should not be read in his lifetime, which led Captain Fortescue to surmise that the contents were in some way not creditable to him.

But in the evening, when all arrangements for the funeral were made, and the servants were below at their supper, he crept with a candle in his hand into the room of death. He felt almost as if he were a thief, as he crossed the floor, and passed the silent form on the bed.

His father had never allowed any one to open that safe. In the days of his childhood he had been accustomed to look at it with awe and wonder, as he speculated on the mysteries it might contain. Now—he was going to open it, and the hand that had so carefully guarded its contents was lying cold and lifeless on the bed. He felt almost as if he would hear his father's protesting voice, as he fitted the key in the lock. He even glanced back at the bed, as if to assure himself that there was no movement there.

The lock turned easily, and the massive iron door flew open. As he looked inside, he saw several packets of deeds tied up with red tape, a pile of account books, and countless old chequebooks. But he did not stop to look carefully at what the safe contained, his eyes sought eagerly for the will, for had not his father told him that, underneath that will, he would find the secret information that he wished him to receive?

[Illustration: HE TURNED ROUND AND SAW WATSON STANDING BEHIND HIM.]

Yes, the will was there; he saw the large envelope on which was written, in clear legal copper-plate characters, "Last Will and Testament of Joseph Fortescue." But the will had little interest for him now. Of what avail to be told that so many thousands had been bequeathed to him, when he knew that those thousands did not exist, but had been swamped in the ruinous flooding of that distant mine? As his poor old father had said, the will was not worth the paper on which it was written. He took it up with beating heart, and looked underneath it.

Yes, there was the letter; he could see his father's crooked, illiterate writing upon it—he could read the words—

"For my son, To be opened after my death."

He was just slipping it into his pocket, when he heard a movement in the room. Was the dead man rising, to make a protest against his reading its contents?

He turned round and saw Watson standing behind him; how she had crept into the room without his hearing her he could not imagine.

"What do you want, Watson?"

"I was passing the door, sir, and saw a light, so came in to see that all was right. You've soon found your way to the safe, sir!"

Captain Fortescue took no notice of this insolent remark; he was not going to give vent to his feeling of anger in the chamber of death; he knew that he would have another opportunity of letting Watson know what he thought of her behaviour to him. So, without deigning to reply, he locked the safe, and taking the will and the keys in his hand he went out of the room.

Crossing the landing, he entered his own bedroom, and closed and locked the door. Now he was safe from intrusion and from Watson's prying gaze. He put his candle on the table, drew a chair near it, and sat down to open the letter. He wondered at himself that he could wait even to do this; but he had a nervous dread of the revelation he was about to receive, and, at the last moment, he actually feared to look upon that which before he had been so anxious to see.

He tore open the long envelope, which was securely fastened at one end, and drew out a sheet of foolscap paper.

He opened it and spread it before him; he turned over the page; he looked at the back of it.

Horror of horrors! Had sudden blindness fallen upon him? Was the loss of sight to be added to all his other losses? He could see nothing—not a single word appeared to be written on any one of the four pages. So far as he could see, it was simply a blank sheet, unused, unsoiled, utterly void of any information on any subject whatever. He held it up to the light; he tried to imagine that he saw secret marks in the tracing of the paper; he turned the pages over and over, but he could find nothing but emptiness—a plain, white surface which seemed to mock his scrutiny.

Surely he had brought the wrong envelope! But no, there was the address on the outside in his father's childish handwriting:

"For my son, To be opened after my death."

Could the old man have made a mistake, and have placed the wrong document in the cover?

He went back to the room of death, carefully locking the door this time, and he made a thorough investigation of the contents of the safe. But he found nothing whatever to repay his search, no other envelope, no other letter—nothing at all but old accounts and a few business papers.

He stood by the bed and looked at his dead father's face, and longed unutterably to ask him what he had done with the information which he had so much wished him to receive. But the lips were closed—the voice was still—and no message came from the other world to guide and direct him in his time of bewilderment and consternation. Fortescue went to his bedroom again, and once more examined the sheet of paper. Then a bright thought seized him. Could it be that his father, fearing lest the document should fall into other hands, had written it in invisible ink? Was it possible that, if he only knew how to deal with it, he might be able to fill those blank pages with words of weight and importance? He remembered, when he was a boy, having a bottle of ink of that kind, which made no mark upon the paper unless heat were brought to bear upon it. Perhaps his father had remembered it also, and, recollecting the fact that he had known the secret as a boy, he had adopted this means of making his letter even more private, and had thus considerably lessened the liability of its being deciphered by any eyes excepting those of his son.

Captain Fortescue therefore went into the library, and carefully held the foolscap sheet to the fire. But, beyond a slight mark of scorching upon one page, it remained unchanged and exactly as he had found it.

Then it crossed his mind that possibly there might be chemicals, which, if applied to paper which had been prepared in a certain way, would bring to light hidden writing and make it legible. He thought he had read of something of the kind being used in time of war, in the place of the ordinary cipher. Possibly this was the explanation which he was seeking. He rang the bell, and Elkington answered it.

"What time do the shops close, Elkington?"

"Eight o'clock, sir."

The captain looked at his watch. "A quarter past nine! Too late, then!"

"What am I thinking of?" said the old butler. "Of course, it's Saturday night. They won't close till ten, or eleven, maybe."

"That's right. Can you send for a cab for me, Elkington?"

"Is it anything I can do, sir?"

"No, Elkington, thank you. I'm afraid not."

"Do you want the cab at once, sir?"

"Yes, at once. The sooner the better."

The old man hurried off to do his young master's bidding, and Kenneth, after placing the precious sheet of paper carefully in the breast pocket of his coat, stood waiting in the hall until the cab arrived. He saw Watson come to the top of the stairs and look down, as if she were watching his movements. Then she came into the hall.

"Are you going out, sir? So late, too?" she added.

The cab drove up at this moment, so that he did not deem it necessary to answer, but he saw her craning her neck forward, that she might catch the direction that he gave to the cabman. Consequently, he altered what he had intended to say, merely naming the part of the town to which he wished to be driven.

The streets of Sheffield were brilliantly lighted as he drove through them; crowds of working people were thronging the main thoroughfares and filling the various shops. But the large chemist's, at which he told the cabman to stop, was practically empty, and the assistants were preparing to close for the night.

"Is Mr. Lofthouse here?" he inquired of one of them.

"He is in his private room, sir. I'll call him. You are only just in time to catch him!"

"Do you think I could speak to him for a few minutes on a private matter?"

"I'll ask him, sir."

In a few moments Kenneth found himself seated beside the old chemist, near the fast-dying embers of the fire in the room behind the shop. He brought the sheet of paper from his pocket and explained his errand. He told Mr. Lofthouse that this paper contained, at least so he believed, information of grave importance to him, and that, whilst it was impossible for him to read it at present, he suspected and hoped that the action of some chemical might be sufficient to bring the writing upon it to light.

The chemist looked carefully at his visitor. Was he a lunatic who was labouring under some strong delusion, or had he good reason for imagining that those blank pages really contained hidden writing? It struck him as a strange time for such a visit, and that made him inclined to be suspicious of the sanity of the man before him. But the Captain's calm, quiet manner impressed him favourably, and when he presently took Mr. Lofthouse into his confidence, by telling him that a relative of his who had lately died had informed him on his death-bed that this paper contained information which it was important for him to receive, he became at once interested and at the same time eager and ready to help.

He inquired whether Captain Fortescue would be willing to entrust the paper to his care, that he might be able to experiment upon it; but when he found that Kenneth did not like the idea of doing so, inasmuch as the information which he supposed the foolscap sheet to contain was of a private nature and intended only for his own perusal, Mr. Lofthouse at once dismissed his assistants, locked the shop door, took his visitor into the laboratory, and proceeded to try the effect of various chemicals upon the paper which he had brought.

For more than an hour the two men worked away on the mysterious pages, but at the end of that time the old chemist declared his firm conviction that the captain was in some way mistaken, for that nothing whatever had been written upon the sheet of foolscap. He could find no evidence of the paper having been chemically treated, and he felt sure that, in some way or other, that paper had been placed in the envelope in the place of the paper which Captain Fortescue had expected to find there.

It was late at night when Kenneth returned home; he was more tired than he realized, until he found himself in his own room, and he slept soundly for the first time since his arrival in Sheffield.

Then followed the long quiet Sunday, during which he sat in the darkened library, and thought of the changes that week had brought into his life, and of the uncertain and difficult future that lay ahead of him.

The funeral was fixed for Tuesday; there were no relations to summon, for he knew of none. He never in his life remembered seeing any one except his father who could claim any relationship to him, however distant. And now that only relation of his was gone, and he was left entirely alone in the world, so far as any natural tie was concerned.

Not only so, but he realized that that week he had lost all his former friends. The schoolfellows at Eton, the men he had known at Sandhurst, the friends he had made since he had entered the army, would now be parted from him by a social gulf which neither he nor they would be able to cross. He would have to sever his connection with them all; leaving the army, he would leave the link which bound him to them. He must begin life anew, and it must be, in future, the life of a man dependent upon his own exertions for his daily bread. How he was to enter upon this life, how that daily bread was to be obtained, he had no idea; what path he could cut out for himself in the hard rock of circumstances which blocked his way, he could not imagine. Nor did he know to whom to apply for advice; his friends were moving in such a totally different sphere that he did not see how they could help him. He felt utterly and entirely alone.

But, at that moment, there suddenly flashed across him four lines which he had learnt to love in brighter and happier days, but which now came back to him with fresh meaning, as they seemed to express the inmost feeling of his heart:

"I do not ask my cross to understand, My way to see: Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand, And follow Thee."