The Best Crime Stories Ever Told Read Online Free PDF

may have been some communication on the white border of a newspaper?”
    “It is, of course, possible.”
    “Then will you set yourself to the task of glancing over the margin of every newspaper, piling them away in another room when your scrutiny of each is complete? Do not destroy anything, but we must clear out the library completely. I am interested in the accounts, and will examine them.”
    It was exasperatingly tedious work; but after several days my assistant reported every margin scanned without result, while I had collected each bill and memorandum, classifying them according to date. I could not get rid of a suspicion that the contrary old beast had written instructions for the finding of the treasure on the back of some account, or on the flyleaf of a book, and as I looked at the thousands of volumes still left in the library, the prospect of such a patient and minute search appalled me. But I remembered Edison’s words to the effect that if a thing exists, search, exhaustive enough, will find it. From the mass of accounts I selected several; the rest I placed in another room, alongside the heap of the earl’s newspapers.
    “Now,” said I to my helper, “if it please you, we will have Higgins in, as I wish some explanation of these accounts.”
    “Perhaps I can assist you,” suggested his lordship, drawing up a chair opposite the table on which I had spread the statements. “I have lived here for six months, and know as much about things as Higgins does. He is so difficult to stop when once he begins to talk. What is the first account you wish further light upon?”
    “To go back thirteen years, I find that your uncle bought a secondhand safe in Sheffield. Here is the bill. I consider it necessary to find that safe.”
    “Pray forgive me, Monsieur Valmont,” cried the young man, springing to his feet and laughing; “so heavy an article as a safe should not slip readily from a man’s memory, but it did from mine. The safe is empty, and I gave no more thought to it.”
    Saying this, the earl went to one of the bookcases that stood against the wall, pulled it round as if it were a door, books and all, and displayed the front of an iron safe, the door of which he also drew open, exhibiting the usual empty interior of such a receptacle.
    “I came on this,” he said, “when I took down all these volumes. It appears that there was once a secret door leading from the library into an outside room which has long since disappeared; the walls are very thick. My uncle doubtless caused this door to be taken off its hinges, and the safe placed in the aperture, the rest of which he then bricked up.”
    “Quite so,” said I, endeavoring to conceal my disappointment. “As this strong box was bought secondhand and not made to order, I suppose there can be no secret crannies in it?”
    “It looks like a common or garden safe,” reported my assistant, “but we’ll have it out if you say so.”
    “Not just now,” I replied; “we’ve had enough of dynamiting to make us feel like housebreakers already.”
    “I agree with you. What’s the next item on the programme?”
    “Your uncle’s mania for buying things at secondhand was broken in three instances so far as I have been able to learn from a scrutiny of these accounts. About four years ago he purchased a new book from Denny Co., the well-known booksellers of the Strand. Denny Co. deal only in new books. Is there any comparatively new volume in the library?”
    “Not one.”
    “Are you sure of that?”
    “Oh, quite; I searched all the literature in the house. What is the name of the volume he bought?”
    “That I cannot decipher. The initial letter looks like ‘M,’ but the rest is a mere wavy line. I see, however, that it cost twelve-and-sixpence, while the cost of carriage by parcel post was sixpence, which shows it weighed something under four pounds. This, with the price of the book, induces me to think it was a scientific work, printed on heavy