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Updated: June 24, 2025
Braden's heart was cold, his face pallid with dread as he hurried up the steps to the front door of the familiar old house. He had forgotten Anne and his vow never to enter the house so long as she was mistress of it. He forgot that her freedom was about to become an accomplished fact, that the thing she had anticipated was now at hand.
Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed Mr. Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway, none of whom, however, were attempting to enter. They stared in some surprise at Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it behind him in Mr. Braden's face.
"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr. Mr. " she replied hurriedly. "Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?" "Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me." "How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret. "I hain't heard your name," he said. "Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's.
If you mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's Hill, I called on him, but he was out. If you see him, tell him to come up to Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him." Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect for Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition. "Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go." "Wouldn't go?"
Now supposing Braden let this man Harker into the secret of the hidden jewels that night, and supposing that Harker and Bryce are in collusion as they evidently are, from what that boy told us and supposing they between them, together or separately, had to do with Braden's death, and supposing that man Collishaw saw some thing that would incriminate one or both eh?" "Well?" asked Mitchington.
If there had been any one to come forward the bank-manager's evidence would surely have proved an incentive to speed for there was a sum of ten thousand pounds awaiting John Braden's next-of-kin. In Bryce's opinion the chance of putting in a claim to ten thousand pounds is not left waiting forty-eight hours whoever saw such a chance would make instant use of telegraph or telephone.
Simmy did not pretend that he accepted Braden's theories; in fact, he pronounced them shocking. Still, he contended, that was neither here nor there. Braden believed in them, and it wasn't any affair of his, after all. "I don't believe it is right for man to try to do God's work," said he, in explaining his objections. "But it doesn't matter what I think about it, old chap, so don't mind me."
"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?" Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way it was put. "I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I had called on you, and you weren't at home. Ball inferred that you had a somewhat singular way of seeing people." "You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.
"Calm yourself," he remarked after Braden's somewhat wild and incoherent beginning. "And sit down. You will not get anywhere pacing this twenty by thirty room, and you are liable to run into something immovable if you don't stop glaring at me and watch out where you are going instead." "Sit down?" shouted Braden, stopping before the old man in the chair, his hands clinched and his teeth showing.
He sprang to the door. "Dr. Bates is below, sir," said the maid. "He would like to see you before he goes." Braden's heart sank. "I'll come at once, Katie." There were three doctors in the library. Dr. Bates went straight to the point. "Your grandfather, Braden, has a very short time to live. He has just dismissed us. Our services are no longer required in this case, if I—"
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