Mr. Matiss advanced to the desk and looked in it.  “It is not here!” he exclaimed.

Not there!  They gazed at him, at the desk, at Lionel, half puzzled.  The lawyer, with rapid fingers, began taking out the papers one by one.

“No, it is not here, in either compartment.  I saw it was not, the moment I looked in; but it was well to be sure.  Where has it been put?”

“I really do not know anything about it,” answered Lionel, to whom he looked as he spoke.  “My uncle told me the will would be found in his desk.  And the desk has not been opened since his death.”

“Could Mr. Verner himself have changed its place to somewhere else?” asked the lawyer, speaking with more than usual quickness, and turning over the papers with great rapidity.

“Not after he told me where the will was.  He did not touch the desk after that.  It was but just before his death.  So far as I know, he had not had his desk brought out of the closet for days.”

“Yes, he had,” said the lawyer.  “After he had executed the codicil on the evening previous to his death, he called for his desk, and put the parchment into it.  It lay on the top of the will—­this one.  I saw that much.”

“I can testify that the codicil was locked in the desk, and the desk was then returned to the closet, for I happened to be present,” spoke up Dr. West.  “I was one of the witnesses to the codicil, as I had been to the will.  Mr. Verner must have moved it himself to some safer place.”

“What place could be safer than the desk in his own bedroom?” cried the lawyer.  “And why move the codicil and not the will?”

“True,” assented Dr. West.  “But—­I don’t see—­it could not go out of the desk without being moved out.  And who would presume to meddle with it but himself?  Who took possession of his keys when he died?” added the doctor, looking round at Mrs. Verner.

“I did,” said Lionel.  “And they have not been out of my possession since.  Nothing whatever has been touched; desk, drawers, every place belonging to him are as they were left when he died.”

Of course the only thing to do was to look for the codicil.  Great interest was excited; and it appeared to be altogether so mysterious an affair that one and all flocked upstairs to the room; the room where he had died! whence the coffin had but just been borne.  Mrs. Tynn was summoned; and when she found what was amiss, she grew excited; fearing, possibly, that the blame might in some way fall upon her.  Saving Lionel himself, she was the only one who had been alone with Mr. Verner; of course, the only one who could have had an opportunity of tampering with the desk.  And that, only when the patient slept.

“I protest that the desk was never touched, after I returned it to the closet by my master’s desire, when the parchment was put into it!” she cried.  “My master never asked for his desk again, and I never so much as opened the closet.  It was only the afternoon before he died, gentlemen, that the deed was signed.”