Corruption of Heliotrope

When the old man died it fell to a nephew who had never met him, Gregory Hellatrap to liquidate his estate. Gregory puzzled for weeks over the fact that, in emptying the old man’s house, he had come upon loaves of stale bread placed with signs of care in positions meant to assure their secrecy. One loaf he found in a shoebox of commensurate size on an upper closet-shelf in the back upstairs bedroom. Another had been plugged like a stopper into the basement flood drain. There was some blindness or naiveté mingled with the cunning which these secretions implied. If there had been a flood, the bread in the drain would have swollen and been discovered (unless the old man expected the waters to dissolve it). Gregory tossed out the breads with other rubbish; but when, some days later, he discovered a safe deposit box key hidden inside a shoe placed with great care inside a breadbox that was also hidden on the back upstairs bedroom closet shelf, behind the shoebox, he had reason to regret his precipitancy.