e steel shelf above the drawers.
Audrey had never experienced any curiosity concerning the documents. Lucre
alone had interested the base creature. No documents would have helped her
to freedom. But now she thought apprehensively: "My fate may be among those
documents." She was quite prepared to learn that her father had done
something silly in his will.

"This resembles a testament," said Mr. Cowl, smiling to himself, and
pulling out a foolscap scrip, folded and endorsed. "Yes. Dated last year."

He unfolded the document; a letter slipped from the interior of it; he
placed the letter on the small occasional table next to the desk, and
offered the will to Audrey with precisely the same gesture as he had
offered the key.

Audrey tried to decipher the will, and completely failed.

"Will you read it, Miss Ingate?" she muttered.

"I can't! I can't!" answered Miss Ingate in excitement. "I'm sure I can't.
I never could read wills. They're so funny, somehow. And I haven't got my
spectacles." She flushed slightly.

"May _I_ venture to tell you what it contains?" Mr. Cowl suggested. "There
can be no indiscretion on my part, as all wills after probate are public
property and can be inspected by any Tom, Dick or Harry for a fee of one
shilling."

He took the document and gazed at it intently, turning over a page and
turning back, for an extraordinarily long time.

Audrey said to herself again and again, with exasperated impatience: "He
knows now, and I don't know. He knows now, and I don't know. He knows now,
and I don't know."

At length Mr. Cowl spoke:

"It is a perfectly simple will. The testator leaves the whole of his
property to Mrs. Moze for life, and afterwards to you, Miss Moze. There are
only two legacies. Ten pounds to James Aguilar, gardener. And the
testator's shares in the Zacatecas Oil Development Corporation to the
National Reformation Society. I may say that the testator had expressed to
me his intention of leaving these shares to the Society. We should have
preferred money, free of legacy duty, but the late Mr. Moze had a reason
for everything he did. I must now bid you good-bye, ladies," he went on
strangely, with no pause. "Miss Moze, will you convey my sympathetic
respects to your mother and my thanks for her most kind hospitality? My
grateful sympathies to yourself. Good-bye, Miss Ingate.... Er, Miss
Ingate, why do you look at me in that peculiar way?"

"Well, Mr. Cowl, you're a very peculiar man