The Lost Million. Le Queux William

and refused to swallow more.

      What request, I wondered, was contained in that crumpled and rather bulky letter which I held in my breast-pocket?

      Outside, in the corridor, the doctor told me that the end was quite near, and suggested that I should obtain something from him concerning his friends.

      “Mr Arnold has already told me,” I replied. “He possesses no friends.”

      And at that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and descended the stairs.

      Back at the bedside in the fast-fading light of the hot day of early June, I took the old man’s bony hand in silent farewell.

      He turned his eyes upon me, gazing at me with a strange intense look, as though trying to read my very soul.

      He endeavoured to speak, but though I bent my ear to his mouth, I could catch no words. His thin nervous hands clenched themselves, his grey beard moved, and he struggled violently to communicate with me, but without avail. Then with his right hand, he made a sign that he wished to write.

      Instantly I obtained a pen and scrap of paper which I placed before him.

      For a long time his hand trembled, so that he could make no intelligible writing. At last, however, he managed slowly, and with infinite difficulty, to trace very unevenly the words —

      “Remember the name Harford – be friendly, but beware of him and the Hand.”

      He watched my face eagerly as I read.

      Of a sudden, the light went out of his grey countenance, the pen dropped from his thin, nerveless fingers, a scarlet spot fell upon the paper, and a deep, long-drawn sigh escaped his ashen lips.

      Then a great stillness fell – a great silence broken only by the low roar of the London traffic.

      And I knew that Melvill Arnold, the man of mystery, was dead.

      Chapter Two

      Contains Several Surprises

      For some moments I stood gazing upon the dead man’s changed face, not knowing how to act.

      I, Lionel Kemball, had, perhaps very unwisely, accepted a strange responsibility. I had acted with complete indiscretion.

      On my way home from Australia, where I had been for a voyage for my health, the liner had called at Naples, and Mr Melvill Arnold had joined us. On the day after we had sailed I heard that he had had a sudden heart seizure, and was confined to his cabin, therefore – why, I can’t exactly tell – I sought him out, and spent a good many hours chatting with him, and keeping him company.

      Perhaps it was that, having been something of an invalid myself, I knew the weary monotony of being confined to bed; I could sympathise with anybody who was ill.

      From the first I realised that Arnold was a man of no ordinary stamp. Possessed of a clear and quick intelligence, he was a cultured man notwithstanding his rather rough exterior, and full of a quiet sound philosophy. To me, it appeared as though he had lived abroad a good many years, and was consequently out of touch with England. Whence he had come he never told me, save to casually mention that he had been a great traveller and had “lived out in the wilds for years.” The possession of the golden god seemed to point to the fact that he had come from Egypt.

      “London has nowadays no attraction for me,” he told me one day. “I only go there merely because I am forced to do so. I finished with London long, long ago.”

      Surely, as I, a prosaic man-of-the-world, sat in that narrow cabin as we steamed up the Mediterranean towards Gibraltar, I had never dreamed that in his old kit-bag, smothered as it was with faded hotel labels, there reposed a fortune in banknotes.

      He had been perfectly frank on one point. He was a man without a single friend. And now I knew that he had an enemy – and that his name was Harford.

      Presently I bent to the dead man’s bag – and examining it thoroughly, discovered that one letter had remained unburned – a letter which, by the London postmark upon it, had been written two years ago. It was addressed in a fine, angular, woman’s hand to “Arnold Edgcumbe, Esquire, Post Office, Kingswear, South Devon.”

      The name caused me to ponder. Had not he admitted that Melvill Arnold was not his real name? Was it not to be supposed that his actual name was Edgcumbe?

      The letter was, to say the least, a curious communication. It bore no address, but on the half-sheet of paper was written, in the same feminine hand, the words: “You, no doubt, saw the newspapers of 6th September, and the sentence of the Court upon the person they know as Lancaster. Rest assured that her betrayal will not go unrevenged by – Her Friend.”

      I stood gazing at the missive which the dead man had evidently believed that I had burned. It would not be difficult to search the files of the newspapers for 6th September 1908, and ascertain for what crime a prisoner named Lancaster had been sentenced. The information might, perhaps, lead me to some further discovery.

      I placed the letter carefully aside and made a most minute search of the dead man’s clothes, and of his other belongings, but found absolutely nothing. Then, crossing the wasted hands, and placing the sheet tenderly over the white face, I left the room, and, descending, informed the hotel manager of what had occurred, while he, in turn, telephoned to an undertaker.

      The effects of the deceased were taken possession of by the hotel manager pending the opening of the letter of instructions, while I conveyed to my own room the ancient bronze cylinder and the golden image that was to be my mascot.

      Death in an hotel is always the cause of unpleasantness with the management, who declare it to be injurious to the reputation of the establishment, hence the body was conveyed away by night to await interment, while I moved to the Cecil.

      But that same night a man from the undertaker’s came to me and asked me somewhat mysteriously what I knew concerning the dead man.

      “He was my friend,” I replied. “Why do you make this inquiry?”

      “Well, sir,” he answered, “the guv’nor sent me round to say that he’s found he wore a false beard. It fell off!”

      The man’s statement mystified me, more especially when he added —

      “The body is that of a much younger man than the gentleman appeared to be. The guv’nor fancies there’s a bit of a mystery about him.”

      “Probably he’s right,” I said, but the judicious administration of a golden coin quickly put matters straight, and my visitor bowed himself out.

      Sorely was I tempted to tear open that letter which the mysterious man, now dead, had with calm forethought prepared, yet on the envelope was boldly written the words: “Not to be opened until after my burial.” That plain injunction deterred me.

      Yet on the following morning I went down Fleet Street to the office of the Daily Telegraph, and there asked to see the file of the paper for September 1908.

      It was not long before I was turning over the pages of the news of the day in question. For some time I searched, until my eye at last caught the name of Lancaster in the report of a trial at Old Bailey.

      The report was headed —

“LADY LETTICE LANCASTER“Amazing Life-Story of an Adventuress

      “The story of a woman adventuress is always interesting, and that of Lettice Earnshaw, alias Lady Lettice Lancaster, is no exception. She is a woman of mystery. Born thirty-four years ago in the West of England, she has lived the greater part of her life more or less by her wits. Always a woman of mystery, she has used many names and lived in many districts, generally changing her name and abode when the attentions of her creditors became too pressing. Many attempts have been made to trap her, but she has always escaped, until yesterday, when she was convicted at the Old Bailey of removing furniture in order to cheat her creditors, and was sent to gaol for nine months.

      “The discoveries made by the police reveal a remarkable romance. Her birth has always been shrouded in mystery, but it is probable that she was to a certain extent entitled to rise the name Lancaster. Her father,