She started to rise, then sank back in her chair and looked at me.  Yes, she was frightened.

“Mr. Lester,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse and broken, “I think I will tell you—­what I can.  I—­I have no one else.”

For the first time in my life I found myself pitying her.  It was true—­she had no one else.

“Don’t think that I’ve been gambling or speculating or anything of that sort,” she went on.  “I have hesitated a long time before asking for this money—­I don’t enjoy giving away fifty thousand dollars.”

“Giving it away?” I repeated.  Certainly she was not the woman to enjoy doing that!

“Yes—­giving it away!  But—­I must have peace!  Another such night as last night—­”

A sudden pallor spread across her face, and she touched her handkerchief hastily to lips and eyes.

“My—­my husband wishes it,” she added, almost in a whisper.

I don’t know what there was about that sentence that sent a little shiver along my spine.  Perhaps it was the tense of the verb.  Perhaps it was the voice in which the words were uttered.  Perhaps it was the haggard glance which accompanied them.  Whatever the cause, I found that some of my client’s panic was communicating itself to me.

“You mean he indicated his wish before he died?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Or left a note of it, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she said, “he has left a note of it,” and she opened the bag she carried on her arm.  “Here it is.”

I took the sheet of paper she held out to me.  It bore these words, written in the crabbed and somewhat uncertain hand which had belonged to Peter Magnus: 

MY DEAR WIFE:  It is my wish that you leave at once on this desk the sum of fifty thousand dollars in currency.

“On this desk?” I repeated, reading the words over again.

“On his desk at home,” she explained.

“Then what is to become of it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But surely—­” I said, bewildered.  “Look here, Mrs. Magnus, you aren’t telling me everything.  Where did you find this?”

“On his desk.”

“When?”

“Three nights ago.”

“You mean it had been lying there unnoticed ever since his death?”

“No,” she answered hoarsely.  “It had not been lying there unnoticed.  It was written that night.”

I could only stare at her—­at her trembling lips, at her bloodshot eyes, at her livid face.

“Then it’s an imposture of some sort,” I said at last.

“It is not an imposture,” she answered, more hoarsely than ever.  “My husband wrote those words.”

“Nonsense!” I retorted impatiently.  “Somebody’s trying to impose on you, Mrs. Magnus.  Leave this with me, and I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“I tell you,” she repeated, rising to her feet in her earnestness, “my husband wrote those words three nights ago.”