The Argosy — page 299: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

280 The Amethyst Seal. ‘Shall I ring for the servant to light up?” queried Harold. ‘““T don’t care to play any more to-day,” was the response. ‘You are not ill, I hope,” said Harold, struck by the change in his cousin’s voice. “Not at all. By-the-bye, how did that amethyst seal come into: your possession P” Harold, who at that moment was winding up his watch, stopped: in the midst of the process, as though all the pulses of his being had suddenly ceased their functions. ‘There was utter silence while a per- son might have counted six slowly. ‘Then, with an elaborate assump.- tion of carelessness, he replied, ‘‘ It came to me with a lot of other things at my father’s death.” With that he finished the winding up of his watch. “The heraldic design, or whatever it may be called, that is engraved on it, is rather an uncommon one, I should imagine,” said Bruce. “It may be uncommon, or it may be common,” responded the other. ‘“ It is a point that I never troubled my head about.” “Uncommon as it is, I have seen it once before,” resumed Bruce ; “and that not very long ago. Can you guess where it was that I saw it?” As he asked this question he turned suddenly and faced his cousin. There was a sort of stern solemnity in his voice. Huis tall figure, clearly outlined against the grey disc of the window behind him, seemed to his cousin’s guilty conscience to loom taller than human through the gathering gloom: “You do not answer me,” went on Bruce, after a moment’s pause. «Such being the case, I will answer for you. In my father’s desk is a certain envelope. That envelope, containing a draft of his will, was posted by me in your presence, on the afternoon of the 3rd of December. My father fastened it up himself, and the wax bore the impress of the only seal he ever uses. ‘That envelope and its con- tents were in the mail-bag which was cut open the same night by some man who took upon himself to personate me in the transaction. When Mr. Symes brought the will to be signed and witnessed, he brought the draft and envelope with him. It was then seen that the latter had been surreptitiously opened and afterwards fastened up again. My father’s seal was no longer there, but in its place was another, the impress on which was an exact counterpart of the design cut in the amethyst I held in my hand five minutes ago. Would you like to see the envelope?” As Bruce’s sentences fell slowly one by one on the ears of the wretched man standing opposite to him, the latter’s face changed as it had never changed before. He cowered and shrank back a step or two, as though his cousin’s words were so many blows which he had neither power nor strength to resist. He put out one hand gropingly as a blind man might have done, and his fingers coming in contact with the back of a chair, he gripped it firmly as though to keep him- ECORMIECOOOKS. (EO)