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Brimsdown had vaguely understood that the money he had invested for Robert Turold had been gained abroad in the wilds of the earth in his client's early life, but his client had never confided to him the manner of the gathering. That was a page in the dead man's life of which his trusted legal adviser knew nothing whatever.
Bunkom was a spidery little man who spun his legal webs in a small dark office at the top of Market Jew Street, a solicitor with a servile manner but an eye like a fox, which dwelt on his eminent confrère from London, as he perused the will, with an expression which it was just as well that Mr. Brimsdown didn't see, so sly and savage was it. The Penzance spider knew his business.
It remained stubbornly in Barrant's perspective, an unexplained factor which could be neither overlooked nor ignored. These thoughts ran through his mind as Mr. Brimsdown talked of his dead client. At the same time, the detective's attitude towards the lawyer underwent a considerable change.
And I never guessed it of Charlie until this morning. I'm sure poor Robert had no idea of it. He would never have agreed after what he told us on the day of the funeral, I mean." Mr. Brimsdown gave a tacit unspoken assent to that.
He had never heard from Robert Turold how he first came into possession of this large sum of money, and his client had never encouraged inquiry on the subject. Mr. Brimsdown had once ventured to ask him how he had made his fortune, and Robert Turold, with a freezing look, had replied that he had made it abroad. Mr. Brimsdown had never again referred to the subject, deeming it no business of his.
It was unsafe to assume that the page, if revealed, would throw any light on his tragic death, but there was a possibility that it might. The evening newspaper he had brought home lay on the carpet at his feet exposing the headline "A Cornish Mystery" which had caught his eye at the restaurant. Mr. Brimsdown picked up the sheet and read the report again. There was nothing in it to help him.
With a sigh for the frailty of human hopes, Mr. Brimsdown put an end to his reflections and went downstairs for the post. By the dim light of the lowered hall gas he saw an envelope lying on the floor a thick grey envelope addressed to himself in a thin irregular hand. The sight of that superscription startled him like a glimpse of the unseen.
Brimsdown rolled it round his tongue as though it were a vintage port pronounced it lingeringly, rolling the "rr's" sonorously, and hissing the "ss's" with a caressing sibilant sound. Turrald of Missenden! Robert Turold was the lineal descendant of the name, and worthy of the title. Mr. Brimsdown had always felt that, from the very first. There was something noble and dominating in his presence.
Barrant dismissed young Turold's opinions about the case with an impatient shake of the head. "Who told him about the marks?" he said. It was the thought which had occurred to Mr. Brimsdown at the time, but he did not say so then. "How did you discover them?" he asked. "When I was examining the body. But Charles Turold had no reason to examine the body. Perhaps Dr. Ravenshaw told him.
If Robert Turold had not safeguarded his dearest ambition because he hoped to carry it out himself, it followed as a matter of course that he did not take his own life. Mr. Brimsdown had never accepted that theory, but it was strange to have it so conclusively proved, as it were, by the inference of an omission.
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