Blind Love | Page 3

days of strikes, co-operations,
and bank holidays, an employer has one privilege left--he has not
ceased to be a Man, and he has not forfeited a man's right to keep his
own secrets. I fail to see anything in my conduct which has given you
just reason to complain."
Dennis, rebuked, made his bow in silence, and withdrew.
Did these acts of humility mean that he submitted? They meant exactly
the contrary. He had made up his mind that Sir Giles Mountjoy's
motives should, sooner or later, cease to be mysteries to Sir Giles
Mountjoy's clerk.
II
CAREFULLY following his instructions, he consulted the third volume
of Gibbon's great History, and found, between the seventy-eighth and
seventy-ninth pages, something remarkable this time.
It was a sheet of delicately-made paper, pierced with a number of little
holes, infinitely varied in size, and cut with the smoothest precision.
Having secured this curious object, while the librarian's back was
turned, Dennis Howmore reflected.

A page of paper, unintelligibly perforated for some purpose unknown,
was in itself a suspicious thing. And what did suspicion suggest to the
inquiring mind in South-Western Ireland, before the suppression of the
Land League? Unquestionably---Police!
On the way back to his employer, the banker's clerk paid a visit to an
old friend--a journalist by profession, and a man of varied learning and
experience as well. Invited to inspect the remarkable morsel of paper,
and to discover the object with which the perforations had been made,
the authority consulted proved to be worthy of the trust reposed in him.
Dennis left the newspaper office an enlightened man--with information
at the disposal of Sir Giles, and with a sense of relief which expressed
itself irreverently in these words: "Now I have got him!"
The bewildered banker looked backwards and forwards from the paper
to the clerk, and from the clerk to the paper. "I don't understand it," he
said. "Do you?"
Still preserving the appearance of humility, Dennis asked leave to
venture on a guess. The perforated paper looked, as he thought, like a
Puzzle. "If we wait for a day or two," he suggested, "the Key to it may
possibly reach us."
On the next day, nothing happened. On the day after, a second letter
made another audacious demand on the fast failing patience of Sir Giles
Mountjoy.
Even the envelope proved to be a Puzzle on this occasion; the postmark
was "Ardoon." In other words, the writer had used the postman as a
messenger, while he or his accomplice was actually in the town,
posting the letter within half-a-minute's walk of the bank! The contents
presented an impenetrable mystery, the writing looked worthy of a
madman. Sentences appeared in the wildest state of confusion, and
words were so mutilated as to be unintelligible. This time the force of
circumstances was more than Sir Giles could resist. He took the clerk
into his confidence at last.
"Let us begin at the beginning," he said. "There is the letter you saw on

my bed, when I first sent for you. I found it waiting on my table when I
woke; and I don't know who put it there. Read it."
Dennis read as follows:
"Sir Giles Mountjoy,--I have a disclosure to make, in which one of the
members of your family is seriously interested. Before I can venture to
explain myself, I must be assured that I can trust to your good faith. As
a test of this, I require you to fulfil the two conditions that follow--and
to do it without the slightest loss of time. I dare not trust you yet with
my address, or my signature. Any act of carelessness, on my part,
might end fatally for the true friend who writes these lines. If you
neglect this warning, you will regret it to the end of your life."
To the conditions on which the letter insisted there is no need to allude.
They had been complied with when the discoveries were made at the
back of the milestone, and between the pages of Gibson's history. Sir
Giles had already arrived at the conclusion that a conspiracy was in
progress to assassinate him, and perhaps to rob the bank. The wiser
head clerk pointed to the perforated paper and the incomprehensible
writing received that morning. "If we can find out what these mean," he
said, "you may be better able, sir, to form a correct opinion."
"And who is to do that?" the banker asked.
"I can but try, sir," was the modest reply, "if you see no objection to my
making the attempt."
Sir Giles approved of the proposed experiment, silently and satirically,
by a bend of his head.
Too discreet a man to make a suspiciously ready use of the information
which he had privately obtained, Dennis took