ick, garrotted, and subsequently robbed, for neither
money, watch, or pocket-book were found upon his person, whilst the
police soon gathered from Patrick Wethered's household that he had left
home at two o'clock that afternoon, carrying both watch and pocket-book,
and undoubtedly money as well.

"An inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder was found against
some person or persons unknown.

"But Dublin had not exhausted its stock of sensations yet. Millionaire
Brooks had been buried with due pomp and magnificence, and his will had
been proved (his business and personalty being estimated at L2,500,000)
by Percival Gordon Brooks, his eldest son and sole executor. The younger
son, Murray, who had devoted the best years of his life to being a
friend and companion to his father, while Percival ran after
ballet-dancers and music-hall stars--Murray, who had avowedly been the
apple of his father's eye in consequence--was left with a miserly
pittance of L300 a year, and no share whatever in the gigantic business
of Brooks & Sons, bacon curers, of Dublin.

"Something had evidently happened within the precincts of the Brooks'
town mansion, which the public and Dublin society tried in vain to
fathom. Elderly mammas and blushing _debutantes_ were already thinking
of the best means whereby next season they might more easily show the
cold shoulder to young Murray Brooks, who had so suddenly become a
hopeless 'detrimental' in the marriage market, when all these sensations
terminated in one gigantic, overwhelming bit of scandal, which for the
next three months furnished food for gossip in every drawing-room in
Dublin.

"Mr. Murray Brooks, namely, had entered a claim for probate of a will,
made by his father in 1891, declaring that the later will made the very
day of his father's death and proved by his brother as sole executor,
was null and void, that will being a forgery."

CHAPTER XXII

FORGERY

"The facts that transpired in connection with this extraordinary case
were sufficiently mysterious to puzzle everybody. As I told you before,
all Mr. Brooks' friends never quite grasped the idea that the old man
should so completely have cut off his favourite son with the proverbial
shilling.

"You see, Percival had always been a thorn in the old man's flesh.
Horse-racing, gambling, theatres, and music-halls were, in the old
pork-butcher's eyes, so many deadly sins which his son committed every
day of his life, and a