Dead Letters Read Online Free Page B

did, too, but also included the name of James Reilly. I leafed through the rest of the papers in the box and found that many were preliminary sketches for the rifle design—all signed by James Reilly.
    I sat back in my chair. It looked to my inexperienced eye very much as if Jeremiah Logan had stiffed his business partner and erstwhile friend James and had hogged all the rewards from the successful patent, which had added significantly to the Logan family fortune while, according to the book about the company, James had died a pauper. Was this what Arthur had found in his own documents?
    I had to find out. It was still early in the day, and I needed to talk to Arthur Logan. When I returned to my office, the box of Reilly papers tucked under my arm, I called his number, and he answered. “Ah, Miss Pratt, you have something for me so soon?”
    “Maybe,” I said cautiously. “May I come talk to you?”
    “Of course. I will expect you for tea at four.”
    Tea. Well, of course. I agreed, then hung up and sat for a moment, trying to put my thoughts in order. Trying to decide what I would tell him, and what I still needed to know. I grabbed a lined pad and started outlining.
    I presented myself to the concierge at his building promptly at three fifty-seven and was directed upstairs with a smile. Arthur Logan was waiting at the door when the elevator opened, and escorted me to the living room, where tea was laid out on a low table: silver pot, porcelain cups, sugar tongs in the shape of the claws of a bird of prey. Arthur seemed in good spirits as he fussed about with pouring and sugaring and such and extended a plate of exquisite
petits fours
toward me. I politely took one and sipped my tea.
    Finally we were settled with our refreshments, and Arthur looked at me directly. “What do you have for me?”
    I returned his gaze and said carefully, “I believe your great-grandfather Jeremiah Logan bilked his business partner, James Reilly, out of his fair share of the Logan Rifle business by omitting him from the patent application for the Logan Repeater rifle. Which means that your family has reaped the profits of what could be called ill-gotten gains. Is that what you were looking for?”
    He smiled, a little sadly. “Indeed, Miss Pratt, my confidence in you was not misplaced. That was much the same conclusion that I had reached. Can you reveal your research process?”
    “Of course. I found a file that contained letters from your grandmother Laura to her niece Josephine that suggested that there was some family matter that would not stand up to scrutiny. When I learned of the Logan Rifle Company, I looked up what we had on the Reilly family and found another file with the patent application and the research and supporting information. James Reilly was the true inventor of the mechanism, right?” When he nodded, I went on, “But the patent listed only Jeremiah Logan.”
    “Precisely.”
    “May I ask how you knew? Or have you always known?” Maybe the latter was a rude question, but I was honestly curious.
    “It did not occur to me to question the early history of the Logan businesses, but as I mentioned to you, I’ve been going through the family papers recently, and I came across a file of letters that James Reilly had sent to members of my family, pleading his case.”
    “Why weren’t those letters destroyed?”
    He sighed. “For good or ill, my family has always had a strong sense of history, and I think perhaps some members felt a lingering sense of guilt. Reilly was not well treated. Had he lived longer, he might have been appropriately compensated, but he died a relatively young man—and a bitter one, as his letters show. I cannot defend my great-grandfather’s actions, although he may have believed that crediting Reilly officially would meet with some resistance. Reilly was an ignorant Irish immigrant, after all—how could his invention be worthwhile? And I prefer to think that old Jeremiah would have seen