There are few things more painful than to pry into the intimacies of those we have loved; and Jaffery and I had to pry alone, because Doria, who might have saved our obligatory search from impertinence, lay, herself, on the Borderland.
All that we required for the simple settlement of his affairs had been found in the cabinet.

On the list of assets for probate we had placed the manuscript of the new book, its value estimated on the sales of "The Diamond Gate." We had not as yet examined the safe in the study, knowing that it held nothing but the manuscript, and indeed we had not entered the forbidding room in which our poor friend had died.

We kept it locked, out of half foolish and half affectionate deference to his unspoken wishes.

Besides, Barbara, most exquisitely balanced of women, who went in and out of the death-chamber without any morbid repulsion, hated the door of the study to be left ajar, and, when it was closed, professed relief from an inexplicable maccabre obsession, and being an inmate of the flat its deputy lady in charge of nurses and servants and household things, she had a right to spare herself unnecessary nervous strain.

But, all else having been done for the dead and for the living, the time now came for us to take the manuscript from the safe and hand it over to the publisher.
So, one dark morning, Jaffery and I unlocked the study-door and entered the gloom-filled, barren room.