“You understand, Mr. Attorney?” he said.  “The present occupants will vacate the premises within a week, and you will bring me the keys.”

Then he strode away, banging the door after him.  The captain whistled.

“Sits the wind—­the whirlwind, I might say-in that quarter?  Where’s the will, Vetch?”

“I would give my right hand to know,” said the lawyer.  “There is Mr. Ellery’s box”—­he indicated a case of black tin with the name John Ellery printed in white letters on its side; “’twas there I laid it, with the title deeds and other documents.  I searched it through yesterday.  I spent half the night in ransacking every other box in the room, all to no purpose.”

“You did not lay it aside when you had drawn it and afterwards engross a blank paper like folded, think you?”

“Sir, ’tis impossible.  I drew the will at a sitting:  it was not a long one; folded, engrossed, and tied it with my own hands.  Nothing short of witchcraft could undo my handiwork.”

“Or your nephew,” snapped the captain.  “He is the boon fellow of young Cludde; ’tis the Cluddes who gain by the disappearance, and mightily glad they will be of the property if all is true that’s said of Sir Richard’s affairs.  Where’s your nephew, Vetch?”

“At home and abed, Captain, suffering from a catarrh.  I did ask him if he knew aught of the matter, and he laughed and denied it, reminding me that I had never trusted him with the keys.  He is wild, I own, sir; heady and self willed, a sore trial to me sometimes; but he is of my name, and that name is honorable in Shrewsbury.”

“’Tut, man, nobody but a fool would suspect you of evil dealing, and if your nephew had a hand in this it might be nought but a boyish prank, though a deuced indecent one.  But now to the practical question:  in the absence of the will, how does Humphrey stand?”

I shall never forget the poor lawyer’s look of misery when this question was put to him, sharp as a pistol shot.  He bent his quill in his hand till it cracked; he fidgeted on his stool; he began a sentence three times and left it unfinished.

“In a word,” says the captain, who was ever for directness, “he is a pauper?”

The lawyer bowed his head, but said never a word.  Captain Galsworthy began to drum on the table with his fingers, as his manner was when perturbed.  I sat silent, still too much under the shadow of my great loss to comprehend the full bearing of his words.

“Did you put it to Cludde?” he asked suddenly.

“I did, sir, with all the force of which I was capable.  I begged him to acquiesce in the known wishes of our friend, to accept the draft of the will—­here it is—­taken ’down by myself from his lips.  Sir Richard looked at it, pished and pshawed, said he had never held John Ellery’s wits in much account, and declared that my instructions were a clear proof of his feeble mindedness.  When I protested that I had never known a man with a clearer head or of sounder sense he bellowed at me:  what, did I think it sound sense to will away to a stranger property that had been in the family for generations?