could not be found. It was known Jimmie kept the will in the safe at his
country house, but from the safe it had disappeared.

Jimmie's best friend, and now Jeanne's lawyer, the man who had refused
him the divorce, had searched the house from the attic to the coal
cellar; detectives had failed to detect; rewards had remained unclaimed;
no one could tell where the will was hidden. Only Jimmie could tell. And
Jimmie was dead. And no one knew that better than Jimmie. Again he
upbraided himself. Why had he not foreseen this catastrophe? Why,
before his final taking off, had he not returned the will to the safe?
Now, a word from him would give Jeanne all his fortune, and that word he
could not speak.

The will was between the leaves of a copy of "Pickwick," and it stood on
a shelf in his bedroom. One night, six months before, to alter a small
bequest, he had carried the will up-stairs and written a rough draft of
the new codicil. And then, merely because he was sleepy and disinclined
to struggle with a combination lock, he had stuck the will in the book
he was reading. He intended the first thing the next morning to put it
back in the safe. But the first thing the next morning word came from
the kennels that during the night six beagle puppies had arrived, and
naturally Jimmie gave no thought to anything so unimportant as a will.
Nor since then had he thought of it. And now how was he, a dead man, to
retrieve it?

That those in the library might not observe his agitation, he went
outside, and in Bryant Park on a bench faced his problem. Except
himself, of the hidden place of the will no one could possibly know. So,
if even by an anonymous letter, or by telephone, he gave the information
to his late lawyer or to the detectives, they at once would guess from