for him. One bundle of old and faded letters which he untied were in a handwriting he at once recognised—the letters of his mother before she had become Lady Remington. Another—a batch written forty years ago—were the letters from his grandfather, while his father was at Oxford. With these were other letters from dead friends and relatives; but, though he spent an hour in searching through them, Raife discovered no clue to the strange secret which Sir Henry had died without divulging. Then he afterwards replaced the papers, closed the safe and re-locked it with the false key which still remained in it. His mother was still too prostrated to speak with him, therefore he again went across to the cottage where the police were with the dead assassin. As he entered, one of the detectives was carefully applying printer’s ink to the tips of the cold, stiff fingers, and afterwards taking impressions of them upon pieces of paper. The secret of the dead thief’s identity would, they declared among themselves, very soon be known. Chapter Four. Reveals Certain Confidences. “Tell him to be careful—to be wary of—the trap?” Those dying words of Sir Henry’s rang ever in his son’s ears. That afternoon, as Raife stood bowed in silence before the body of his beloved father, his mind was full of strange wonderings. What was the nature of the dead man’s secret? Who was the woman to whom he had referred a few moments before he expired? The young fellow gazed upon the grey shrunken face he had loved so well, and his eyes became dimmed by tears. Only a week before they had been in London together, and he had dined with his father at the Carlton Club, and they had afterwards gone to a theatre. The baronet was then in the best of health and spirits. A keen sportsman, and an ardent golfer, he had been essentially an out-door man. Yet he now lay there still and dead, killed by an assassin’s bullet. Raife’s mother was inconsolable and he had decided that it was best for him to keep apart from her for the present. To his friend,
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