Alan had been holding his hand over the papers which he had thrust into his pocket; he went back into the smaller library and spread them under the reading lamp to examine them. Sherrill had assumed that Corvet had left in the house a record which would fully explain what had thwarted his life, and would shed light upon what had happened to Corvet, and why he had disappeared; Alan had accepted this assumption. The careful and secret manner in which these pages had been kept, and the importance which Wassaquam plainly had attached to them—and which must have been a result of his knowing that Corvet regarded them of the utmost importance—made Alan certain that he had found the record which Sherrill had believed must be there. Spearman's manner, at the moment of discovery, showed too that this had been what he had been searching for in his secret visit to the house.
But, as Alan looked the pages over now, he felt a chill of disappointment and chagrin. They did not contain any narrative concerning Benjamin Corvet's life; they did not even relate to a single event. They were no narrative at all. They were—in his first examination of them, he could not tell what they were.
They consisted in all of some dozen sheets of irregular size, some of which had been kept much longer than others, a few of which even appeared fresh and new. The three pages which Alan thought, from their yellowed and worn look, must be the oldest, and which must have been kept for many years, contained only a list of names and addresses. Having assured himself that there was nothing else on them, he laid them aside. The remaining pages, which he counted as ten in num-
