"I was to be further bewildered before my first day of investigation came to an end. Young Lord Ashiel had spent the day in searching for the will; and, if my inward certainty that he himself would prove to be the guilty man should turn out to be right, I could very well understand that he was anxious to find it. For, from what his uncle had said to Miss Byrne, it seemed possible that he had so worded his last will and testament, that whoever succeeded to the great fortune he had to bequeath, it might not be Mark McConachan. But the will was not to be found, and there was no doubt to whose interest it was that it should never be found; so that I felt pretty sure that, if the successor to the title were once able to lay his hands on it, no one else would ever do so. However, he hadn't found it yet, or the search would not be continued with such unmistakable ardour.
"Now I had a fancy myself to have a look for the will. I took the last words of the dead man to be an effort to indicate how I was to do so, and I had no idea of prosecuting my search under the eye of his nephew. Young Ashiel was to dine at the cottage here, with Lady Ruth; so I excused myself under pretence of a headache from appearing at dinner, and hurried back to the castle as soon as I could do so unobserved. I got in by a window which I had purposely left open, and made my way to the library. The words that Lord Ashiel, as he lay dying, had managed to stammer out to his daughter, were only five. 'Gimblet--the clock--eleven--steps.' I had decided to take the clock in the library as the starting-point of investigation. He might, of course, have referred to any other clock, but only one could be dealt with at a time, and a beginning must be made somewhere. Moreover, I had noticed a curious feature about that particular timepiece. It was clamped to the wall, which struck me as very suggestive; and I thought it quite likely I should be able to discover some kind of secret drawer concealed within, or behind, the tall black lacquered case, where the will and other papers of which Lord Ashiel had told me might be hidden. But in spite of my best efforts I came across nothing of the kind.
"I then examined the floor of the room at spots on its surface which were at a distance of about eleven steps from the clock, in the hope of finding some opening between the oak boards; but all to no purpose. I began to think that by some specially contrived mechanism the hiding-place might only be discernible at eleven o'clock, and though the idea seemed farfetched, I don't like to leave any possibility untested, so I sat down to wait till the hour should strike.