Mexico weekly ledger., 1891-09-24

S
not remember where he was. was he
| in his prison cell. or had he been hanged,
| and was this after death? In a few mo-
ments he came to himself. Tie candle
was faring in the socket. The faint
| gray Of dawn was coming through the
dusty panes Of the eastern window.
| Who had screamed: The sick man, Of
course. Keppel looked toward the bed;
it was vacant. What had happened? He
got to his feet and made a step forward.
He trod upon something that yielded
beneath his weight. It was the body of
the invalid. Recoiling, he fetched the
expiring candle and bent over it. The
mans body was drawn together, lying
on its side. The hands were over the
face. In the right hand was a long
knife.
Evidently he had crawled from his bed
and stolen on Keppel with the intention of
stabbing him, but just before he could
accomplish his purpose the specter by
which he imagined himself haunted had
interviewed. The man was dead. The
candle fickered and died out. keppel
made a spring for the other candle, but
remembered that he had no matches.
He could not stay with the body in the
darkness, so he made his way to the
open air. The morning sky was clear,
the eastern horizon a pale yellow. He
paced up and down before the house till
the sun rose, his mind full of gloomy
thoughts. Horror and misery pursue
him everywhere. He had the revolver
in his pocket; why not use it on himself
and end all? He paused, debating the
question, but finally shook his head. He
had had S many escapes lately that he
persuaded himself he might have been
preserved for a purpose. The unclouded
sun, rising over the blue verge of the
distant ocean, was an omen Of hope. He
turned, and reluctantly re-entered the
house.
The sunlight fell upon the corpse as it
lay there. Keppel set resolutely to work.
He straitened out the arms and legs
and rolled up the body in a blanket from
the bed. He tied it round with q piece
Of rope from the fishnet. 1t was now
ready for burial. But how was he to dig
a grave? He had no spade. Yet the body
could lot be left above the ground; it
might breed a pestilence. This reflection
led to another. If the maj had died Of
yellow fever all his clothing must hold
the contagion and should be burned.
Keppel resolved to do this at once. The
coat and trousers were lying on a stool
at the head of the bed. He took them
up, and some papers slipped from the
pocket and fell on the floor. He ex-
amined them, at first inditferently, then
with more interest. There was a pass
port with several vises upon it, showing
a journey through Egypt, India, Aus
tralia and Panama. There We're several
letters, apparently from persons of high
authority in Paris, recommending the
bearer, Maurice Solange, to the good of
fees of foreign consuls. 1t appeared,
moreover, that Maurice must have been
a parsonage of some Importance, or, at
any rate, that he had been intrusted
with an important mission. These let
tiers of recommendation could have been
delivered only by the French e1nperor's
authority.
But the nature of the mission was not
specified in the papers. 1t even seemed
as if this non-specification had been care
fully intended. There was a reason,
then, for keeping the thing secret-a
secret of state.
Was it likely, however, that the poor
wretch, whose body lay yonder awaiting
burial, would murder a man for the sake
of a secret of state? Nothing was less
likely. What good could the secret dc
the murderer? Wa it a thing he could
sell? Some secrets were salable, no doubt.
But Maurice, an authorized agent on his
way to America, must have been coming
to impart the secret to the government
here; therefore no sale could have been
contemplated. Besides, the dead man
had said something about a treasure
millions of money. That might have
been the mere rawlings of insanity; but
possibly it was not. A murder commit
ted for millions of money was compre-
hensible, and this would account for the
murderer's strange behavior. On the
other hand, if those millions had been
stolen, where We're they? Were they
about the premises?
Keppel Darke had never heretofore re-
garded money as a supreme object Of
ambition. But things We're changed
with him now. He was an outcaset from
society; mankind was hostile to him; in
the unequal contest he was disposed tc
improve whatever advantages came il
his way. If, then, millions of money
were within his reach he was not in &
mood to let them escape.
Here Keppel gave a short laugh. The
millions probably had no existence what,
ever, except in the imagination of an i'll
sane man.
He turned over the papers once more.
Among them was one small document,
folded square, that he did not remember
noticing before. He was about to pass
it over, but an idle impulse caused him
to change his mind and open it. The
odd aspect of its contents attracted his
attention.
1t looked something like a long sum in
algebra. There were columns and COM
binations of letters. There were also
written words in the French Language.
For several minutes Keppel contem-
plated the paper without a suspicion OF
its significance. 1t was not a sum in al,
zebra. There We're no equations; no j
iok y III po"CAo VI GishS, ~ iiiSAS NC q
memorandum in shorthand or cipher
Yes, it was probably a cipher memoran-
dunn. But it was not all in cipher. The
words-seemed to be a comment or ex.
PLANTATION.
SIT strikes me" said Keppel to him
self, "that I've seen something like this
somewhere. C. Kphl.-S. limp That
looks familiar"
All at once he began to feel in his
pockets with signs of excitement.
Here it Was-the newspaper cutting,
containing the cipher letter found on the
person of Harry Trent after his death
Keppel spread it out on his knee and
compared it with the anomalous docu
ment. In q moment he uttered a cry O
surprise-surprise that his wild anticipa
ton had been fulfilled.
The cipher Of the letter and the cipher
OF the document were identical. Blu
! the latter was the key TO the former and
|, the explanation of it, and by its aid KEEP
pei could read the mysterious communi
cation a easily as he could construt
French.
CHAPTER VIII.
DISAPPEARANCE
GA