CHAPTER VI.

THE PLUNDER OF THE MUNIMENT CHEST.

The sight of the girl he fondly loved lying senseless at his feet, with a white face and closed eyelids, filled Lucius Davoren with unspeakable agony and remorse. How little had he calculated the effect of his words upon this too-sensitive nature! To him the danger involved in the plot which he suspected was but a small thing—a difficulty to be met and grappled with. That was all. But to this inexperienced girl the thought of a midnight intruder, of a stranger’s secret entrance into the house, with the connivance of its treacherous inmates, was doubtless appalling.

Could he despise his betrothed for her want of courage? No! His first thought was professional. This sudden fainting fit was no doubt the evidence of weakened health. Days of patient attendance upon the invalid, nights rendered sleepless by anxiety, had done their work. Lucille’s strength had given way—that change in her appearance and manner which had so much disturbed him was but one of the indications of broken health. And he, who loved her better than life itself, felt himself guilty of cruel neglect in not having ere this discovered the truth. That gentle self-sacrificing spirit was stronger than the fragile frame which was its earthly temple.

He lifted her from the ground, placed her in Mr. Sivewright’s easy-chair by the open window, and then rang the bell loudly.

Mrs. Wincher came, but entered the room with head flung back, and a lofty air, which might have become Queen Eleanor in the presence of Fair Rosamond. At sight of her unconscious mistress, however, Mrs. Wincher gave a piteous scream, and flew to her side.

‘Whatever have you been and gone and said to this poor dear,’ she exclaimed indignantly, flinging a scornful glance at Lucius, ‘to make her faint dead off like that? I suppose you’ve been accusing _her_ of robbing her grandfather. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise me if you had.’

‘Don’t be angry, Mrs. Wincher,’ said Lucius; ‘but bring me some cold water directly, and a little brandy.’

Mrs. Wincher, alarmed for the safety of her mistress, flew to fetch these restoratives, but obeyed Mr. Davoren as it were, under protest, in his professional capacity.

A little care restored Lucille to consciousness, but even after she had recovered from her swoon, she seemed strangely shaken, and looked at her lover with an expression full of vague fear.

He began to reproach her, with infinite tenderness, for her neglect of her own health.

‘You have been doing too much, darling,’ he said, kissing the pale forehead that rested on his shoulder, ‘and I have been guilty of shameful neglect in allowing you to endanger your health. And now, dear, you must obey orders. You must go straight up to your room and let Wincher help you to bed, and lie there quietly all day long, and be fed with beef-tea and good old port until the colour comes back to those poor pale cheeks.’

Lucille persistently refused compliance with these injunctions.

‘Indeed, indeed, Lucius, there is nothing the matter with me,’ she said earnestly.

‘Nothing the matter when you fainted just now—a sure sign of extreme weakness—especially in one not accustomed to fainting?’

‘O, that was nothing. You frightened me so with your suggestions of danger.’

‘Do not be afraid any longer, dearest; there is no danger that can assail you, except the danger of your ruining your health by refusing to be guided by my advice. You want rest, and ought to endeavour to get several hours’ good sleep.’

‘It wouldn’t be the least use for me to try to go to sleep before night,’ she said; ‘my mind is much too active for that. I’ll obey you in anything else you like, Lucius, but don’t ask me to lie down in my room to-day. I should worry myself into a fever.’

‘Very well,’ replied Lucius, with a sigh; ‘I won’t insist upon anything you object to. You can rest in this room. If I find your grandfather no better this morning I shall bring in a nurse.’

‘O, please don’t.’

‘Nonsense, Lucille. I am not going to allow your life to be sacrificed to your mistaken notion of duty. Some one must nurse Mr. Sivewright, and that some one must not be you.’

‘Let it be Mrs. Wincher, then.’

‘No; I have not too high an opinion of these faithful Winchers. I shall bring in a woman upon whom I can rely.’

Lucille looked at him with that strange scared expression he had seen so often of late, and then said with some bitterness:

‘It seems to me that you are master in this house, Lucius, so I suppose you must do as you please.’

‘I only constitute myself master here when I see peril,’ he replied calmly; ‘and now, Lucille, try to obey me in some small measure at least. Let Mrs. Wincher bring a sofa of some kind to this room, and lie down and try to sleep. I will send you a tonic as soon as I get home. Good-bye.’

He bent down to kiss her as she sat in the armchair, where he had placed her, too weak to rise.

‘Shall you come here again this evening?’ she asked.

‘Yes; your grandfather wants to talk to me about something, and I daresay I shall be an hour or so with him in the evening. After that I shall have something to tell you, Lucille, if you are well enough to hear it. Something pleasant.’

‘You are not going to frighten me any more, I hope,’ she said.

‘No, darling, I will never again frighten you.’

‘I daresay you despise me for my cowardice.’

‘Despise you, Lucille? No, I only regard this nervous terror as a sign of weakened health. I am very sure it is not natural to you to be wanting in courage.’

‘No,’ she answered, with a faint sigh, ‘it is not natural to me.’

She turned her face away from him, and tears fell slowly from the sad eyes, as she faltered a faint good-bye in response to his tender leave-taking.

‘O, merciful God,’ she ejaculated, when the door had closed behind her lover, ‘Thou who knowest the weight of my burden, help me to bear it patiently.’

* * * * *

Lucius found no improvement in his patient—retrogression rather. But this might be fairly accounted for by Mr. Sivewright’s excitement of the night before.

‘I did very wrong to let you talk so much,’ said Lucius; ‘you are more feverish than usual this morning.’

‘I am altogether worse,’ answered the old man fretfully.

Then came a detailed account of his aches and pains. There were symptoms that puzzled the surgeon, despite his wide experience, and much wider study.

‘Let me bring a physician to see you this afternoon,’ said Lucius; ‘there is something in this case which I hardly feel myself strong enough to cope with.’

‘No,’ answered the patient doggedly; ‘I told you I would have no stranger come to stare at me. Cure me if you can, and if you can’t, leave it alone. I have little faith in medicine. I contrived to live sixty-five years without it, and the experience I have had of it in the sixty-sixth year has not been calculated to strengthen my belief in its efficacy.’

‘Did you finish that last bottle of medicine?’

‘No, there is a dose left.’

‘Then I’ll take the bottle home with me,’ said Lucius, selecting the bottle from among two or three empty phials on the mantelshelf, ‘and make another change in your medicine.’

‘It seems to me that you chop and change a good deal,’ said the patient testily. ‘But why take that bottle? You must know what you gave me.’

‘I am not quite clear about it,’ answered Lucius, after a moment’s hesitation; ‘I may as well put the bottle in my pocket.’

‘Do as you like. But don’t forget that I want an hour’s talk with you this evening.’

‘You had better defer that till you are stronger.

‘That time may never come. No, I will defer nothing. What I have to say to you is of no small importance. It concerns your own interests, and I recommend you to hear it to-night.’

‘I cannot consent to discuss any subject which may agitate you as you were agitated last night,’ said Lucius firmly.

‘This other subject will not agitate me. I can promise that.’

‘On that condition I will hear whatever you may have to say.’

‘Good. You will find it to your own advantage to obey me. Be with me at the same hour as you were last night.’

‘I will. But as you are a trifle weaker to-day than you were yesterday, I should recommend you not to get up, except for an hour in the middle of the day, while your bed is being made.’

‘Very well.’

Lucius left him, and in the corridor found himself face to face with Mrs. Wincher.

‘She has been listening, I daresay,’ he thought, having made up his mind that these Winchers were of the scorpion breed, and their long years of fidelity only a sham. ‘After all, dishonesty is only a matter of opportunity, and the domestic traitor must bide his time to betray.’

Mrs. Wincher’s manner and bearing were curiously changed since Lucius had last seen her. She no longer flung her head aloft; she no longer regarded him with looks of scorn. Her present air was that of extreme meekness; he thought he beheld traces of shame and contrition in her visage.

‘How do you find master this morning, sir?’ she asked.

‘Worse,’ Lucius answered shortly.

‘Dear, dear! that’s bad! And I’m sure it isn’t for want of care. I’m sure the beef-tea that I gave him used to be a jelly—that firm as you could cut it with a knife—though Miss Lucille did take the making of it out of my hands.’

‘Miss Sivewright is naturally anxious about her grandfather,’ answered Lucius coldly, ‘and I am very anxious too.’

He was about to pass Mrs. Wincher, without farther parley, when she stopped him.

‘O, if you please, Dr. Davory,’ she said meekly, ‘would you be kind enough to let my good gentleman have a few words with you? The fact is, he’s got somethink on his mind, and he’d feel more comfortable if he ast your advice. I didn’t know nothink about it till five minutes ago, though I could see at breakfast-time as he was low-spirited and had no happetite for his resher; but I thought that was along of master being so bad. Howsumdever, five minutes ago he ups and tells me all about it, and says he, “If I tell Dr. Davory, I shall feel more comfortable like,” he says. So I says I’d ast you to have a few words with him.’

‘Where is he?’ asked Lucius, his suspicions increased by this singular application.

‘In the room where the bricklebrack is kep’,’ answered Mrs. Wincher. ‘He’s been dustin’ as usual, and he said he’d take the liberty to wait there for you.’

‘Very well; I’ll go and hear what he has to say.’

Lucius went down-stairs to the large room with its multifarious contents—the room which held the chief part of Mr. Sivewright’s collection.

Here he found Mr. Wincher, moving about feebly with a dusting brush in his hand.

‘Well, Mr. Wincher, what’s the matter with you this morning?’ asked Lucius. ‘Do you want to consult me professionally?’

‘No, sir. It isn’t anything that way,’ answered the old man, who was somewhat his wife’s superior in education, but infinitely less able to hold his own conversationally, such intellectual powers as he may have originally possessed having run to seed during his long dull life, and the only remaining brightness being that feeble glimmer which still illumined the regions of art. He would swear to an old master’s handling—could tell a Memling from a Van Eyck—or an Ostade from a Jan Steen—knew every mark to be found on old china or delf, from the earliest specimens of Rouen ware to the latest marvels of Sèvres, from the clumsiest example of Battersea to the richest purple and gilding of Worcester. But beyond the realms of art the flame of Jacob Wincher’s intellect was dim as a farthing rushlight.

‘I’ve had a shock this morning, sir,’ he said.

‘Some kind of fit, do you mean?’ asked Lucius. ‘You said you didn’t want to consult me professionally.’

‘No more I do, sir. The shock I’m talking about wasn’t bodily, but mental. I’ve made a dreadful discovery, Mr. Davoren. This house has been robbed.’

‘I’m not surprised to hear it,’ said Lucius sternly.

He thought he saw which way matters were drifting. This old man was cunning enough to be the first to give the alarm. Lucius’s incautious remarks to Mrs. Wincher had put her husband upon his guard, and he was now going to play the comedy of innocence.

‘Not surprised to hear it, sir?’ he echoed, staring aghast at Lucius.

‘No, Mr. Wincher. And I am sure that no one knows more about it than you do.’

‘Lord save us, sir! what do you mean?’

‘Let me hear your story, sir,’ answered Lucius, ‘and then I’ll tell you what I mean.’

‘But for Heaven’s sake, Mr. Davoren, tell me you don’t suspect me of any hand in the robbery!’ cried the old man piteously—‘I, that have lived five-and-twenty years with Mr. Sivewright, and had the care of everything that belonged to him all that time!’

‘A man may wait five-and-twenty years for a good opportunity,’ said Lucius coolly. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to be tragical, Mr. Wincher, but say what you have to say, and be quick about it. I tell you again that I am in no manner surprised to hear this house has been robbed. It was no doubt robbed last night, and perhaps many nights before. But I tell you frankly, that I intend to take measures to prevent this house being robbed again; even if those measures should include putting you and your good lady upon the outside of it.’

‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ cried Jacob Wincher, wringing his hands. ‘You are a great deal too hard upon me, sir. You’ll be sorry for it when you find out how unjust you’ve been.’

‘I promise to be sorry,’ answered Lucius, ‘when I _do_ make that discovery. Now, Mr. Wincher, be explicit, if you please.’

But Jacob Wincher declared that he was all of a tremble, and had to sit down upon an ancient choirstall, and wipe the perspiration from his forehead before he was able to proceed.

Lucius waited patiently for the old man to recover his self-possession, but in no manner relaxed the severity of his countenance. In all this agitation, in this pretended desire to confide in him, he saw only a clever piece of acting.

‘Well, Mr. Wincher,’ he said, as the old servant mopped his forehead with a blue cotton handkerchief, ‘how about this robbery?’

‘I’m coming to it, sir. But you’ve given me such a turn with what you said just now. God knows how cruel and how uncalled for those words of yours were.’

‘Pray proceed, Mr. Wincher.’

‘Well, sir, you must know there’s a deal of property about this place, perhaps a good deal more than you’ve ever seen, though our old master seemed to take to you from the first, and has been more confidential with you than he ever was with any one else. Now there’s a good deal of the property that isn’t portable, and there’s some that is—china, for instance; little bits of tea-cups and saucers that are worth more than you’d be willing to believe; and silver—’

‘Silver!’ exclaimed Lucius, astonished.

‘Yes, sir. You didn’t know of that, perhaps. Among the things master collected after he retired from business—and he was always collecting something, as long as he could get about among the brokers, and in all the courts and alleys in London—there was a good bit of old silver. Five Queen Anne teapots; three Oliver Cromwell tankards, not very much to look at unless you were up to that sort of thing, but worth their weight in gold, Mr. Sivewright used to say to me. “I wish I was rich enough to do more in old silver,” he has said many a time. “There’s nothing like it. Collectors are waking up to the value of it, and before many years are over old silver will be almost as precious as diamonds.” He picked up a good many nice little bits first and last, through rummaging about among old chaps that dealt in second-hand stuff of that sort, and didn’t trouble to ask any awkward questions of the people that brought ’em the goods; picked up things that would have gone into the melting-pot very likely, if his eye hadn’t been quick enough to see their value. One day he’d bring home a set of spindle-legged saltcellars; another time a battered old rosewater dish. Once he bought a “monstrance” which had been used upon some cathedral altar, once upon a time—solid gold set with rubies and emeralds. “The fool that I bought it from took it for ormolu,” he said.’

‘And these are the things that are gone, I suppose,’ said Lucius, somewhat puzzled by the old man’s loquacity. Why should Wincher inform him of the existence of these things if he were an accomplice of the thief? Yet this seeming candour was doubtless a part of the traitor’s scheme.

‘Every one of ’em, sir. There’s been a clean sweep made of ’em. But how any thief could find out where they were kept is more than I can fathom. It’s too much for my poor old brains.’

‘The thief was well informed, depend upon it, Mr. Wincher,’ answered Lucius. ‘And pray, whereabouts did you keep this old silver?’

‘Would you like to see, sir?’

‘I should.’

‘I’ll show you the place, then.’

Jacob Wincher led the way to the extreme end of the repository, where behind a tall screen of old oak panelling there was a massive muniment chest furnished with a lock which seemed calculated to defy the whole race of burglars and pick-locks.

The old servant took a key from his pocket—a small key, for the lock was of modern make—unlocked and opened the chest. There was nothing in it except an old damask curtain.

‘The silver was rolled up in that curtain,’ said Jacob Wincher, taking up the curtain and shaking it vigorously, as if with some faint hope that the Queen Anne teapots would fall out of its folds, like the rabbits or live pigeons in a conjurer’s trick. ‘The iron safe was a landlord’s fixture in Bond-street, and we were obliged to leave it behind us, so this chest was the safest place I could find to put the silver in; in fact, master told me to put it there.’

‘I see,’ thought Lucius; ‘the old scoundrel is telling me this story in advance of the time when his master will inevitably ask for the silver. This seeming candour is the depth of hypocrisy.’

Jacob Wincher stood staring at the empty chest in apathetic hopelessness, feebly rubbing his chin, whereon some grizzled tufts lingered.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ said Lucius, ‘that this chest was locked, and that you had the key of it in your pocket, at the time of the robbery?’

‘Yes, sir. The chest has never been left unlocked for five minutes since that silver has been in my care; and I have never slept without this key being under my pillow.’

‘And you would have me believe that a stranger could hit upon the precise spot where the silver was kept, amidst this inextricable tangle of property, open the box without doing any damage to the lock, and walk off with his booty without your knowing anything of his entrance or exit?’

‘It seems strange, doesn’t it, Mr. Davoren?’

‘It seems more than strange, Mr. Wincher. It seems—and it is—incredible.’

‘And yet, sir, the thing has been done. The question is, was it done by a stranger?’

‘Yes, Mr. Wincher, that is the question; and it is a question which, to my mind, suggests only one answer.’

‘You mean that I am telling you lies, sir? that it was my hand which stole those things?’ cried the old man.

‘To be plain with you, that is precisely my idea.’

‘You are doing me a great wrong, sir. I have served my master faithfully for so many years that I ought to be above suspicion. I have not much longer to remain in this world, and I would rather die of want to-morrow than lengthen my days by a dishonest action. However, if you choose to suspect me, there is an end of the matter, and it is useless for me to say any more.’

There was a quiet dignity about the old man’s air as he said this that impressed Lucius. Was it not just possible that he had done wrong in jumping at conclusions about these Winchers? The police, who are apt to jump at conclusions, are just as apt to be wrong. But if these people were not guilty, who else could have opened the door to that midnight intruder? There was no one else.

‘Come, Mr. Wincher,’ he said, ‘I have good reason for my suspicion. I saw a man admitted into this house, by one of the back doors, between one and two o’clock this morning. You, or your wife, must have opened the door to that man.’

‘As there is a heaven above us, sir, I never stirred from my bed after half-past eleven o’clock last night.’

‘Your wife must have admitted him, then.’

‘Impossible, sir!’

‘I tell you I saw the man creep from the barges to the garden; I saw the door opened,’ said Lucius; and then went on to describe that midnight watch of his minutely.

The old man stared at him in sheer bewilderment.

‘A stranger admitted!’ he repeated. ‘But by whom? by whom?’

‘Had I not seen the light as the door opened, I might have thought that the man opened the door for himself,’ said Lucius.

‘That would have been equally impossible. I looked to all the fastenings myself the last thing. The doors were locked and barred, and those old-fashioned iron bars are no trifling defence.’

Lucius, too, was bewildered. Could Mr. Sivewright himself have disposed of this property? In so eccentric a man nothing need be surprising. Could he have crept down-stairs in the dead of the night to admit some dealer, disposed of his property, dismissed the man, and crept stealthily back to his bed? No, that was too wild a fancy. Despite of his eccentricities, Mr. Sivewright had plenty of common sense, and such a proceeding as that would have been the act of a madman.

‘Supposing any stranger to have obtained admittance to the house,’ said Lucius, after an interval of perplexed thought, ‘how could he have opened that chest without your key?’

‘A stranger could not possibly have done it,’ said Wincher, with a stress upon the word ‘stranger.’

‘Who else, then?’

‘There is one who could have opened that chest easy enough, or any other lock in the place, supposing him to be alive; but I make no doubt he’s dead and gone ever so long ago.’

‘Whom do you mean?’

‘Mr. Ferdinand, my master’s son.’

Lucius gave a slight start at the sound of that unwelcome name, of all sounds the most hateful to his ear. ‘Then he—Ferdinand Sivewright—had a duplicate key, I suppose?’

‘Yes, of most things about the place in Bond-street, except the iron safe: he never could get at that till he drugged his father, and stole the key out of his pocket while he was asleep. But other things, that were pretty easy to get at, he did get at, and robbed his father up hill and down dale, as the saying is. O, he was a thorough-paced scoundrel, though I’m sorry to say it, as he was our young missy’s father.’

‘He had a duplicate key to that chest, you say?’

‘Yes. He was that artful there was no being up to him. We used to keep old china in that chest—Battersea and Chelsea and Worcester and Derby—valuable little bits of the English school, which fetch higher prices than anything foreign nowadays. All of a sudden, soon after he came to be partner with his father—for the old man doated upon him, and would have made any sacrifice to please him—I found out that the specimens in the muniment chest were dwindling somehow. One day I missed a cup and saucer, and another day a soup-basin and cover, and so on. At first I thought I must be mistaken—my own catalogue was wrong, perhaps—but by and by I saw the things visibly melting, as you may say, and I told my master. He told Mr. Ferdinand about it; but bless your heart, Mr. Ferdinand brings out the day-book with the sale of those very goods entered as neatly as possible, some under one date, and some under another. “I never remember taking the money for those things, Ferdinand,” said my master; but Mr. Ferdinand stood him out that he’d had the money all correct, and master believed him, or pretended to believe him, I hardly know which. And so things went on. Sometimes it was in small things, sometimes in large; but in every way that a son could plunder his father, Ferdinand Sivewright plundered my master. It was quite by accident I found out about his having the duplicate key. He came to the desk where I was writing one day and asked me to give him change for a sovereign, and in taking the money out of his waistcoat-pocket in his quick impatient way he tumbles out a lot of other things—a pencil-case, a penknife, and a key. I knew that key at a glance; it’s a peculiar-looking one, as you see. “That’s a curious little key, Mr. Ferdinand,” said I, picking it up and looking at it before he could stop me. “Yes,” he said, taking it out of my hand before I’d had time to examine it very closely, and putting it back in his pocket, “it’s a key that belonged to my poor mother’s jewel-case. No use to me; but I keep it for her sake.” Well, sir, I told Mr. Sivewright about that key, but he only sighed in that downhearted way which was common enough with him in those days. He didn’t seem surprised, and indeed I think he’d come to know his son’s ways pretty well by this time. “Say nothing about it, Wincher,” he said to me, “you may be mistaken after all. In any case you needn’t keep anything valuable in the chest in future. If my only son is a thief, we won’t put temptation in his way.”’

‘Hard upon the father,’ said Lucius. ‘But this throws no light upon the disappearance of those things. What do you consider their value?’

‘As old silver the plate may be worth about forty pounds, as specimens of art at least three hundred. The monstrance is worth much more.’

‘Humph, and I suppose a thief would be likely to sell them immediately as old silver.’

‘Yes; unless he were a very artful dodger, and knew where to find a good market for them, he’d be likely to sell them without an hour’s delay to be melted down.’

‘When did you last see the things safe in that chest?’ asked Lucius.

‘About ten days ago. I haven’t much to do, you see, sir, except grub about amongst the collection; and I’m in the habit of looking over the things pretty often, and comparing them with my catalogue, to see that all’s right.’

‘And you never missed anything before?’

‘Never so much as a cracked tea-cup among what I call the rubbishing lots. Heaven only knows how that chest could have been emptied. Even if Ferdinand Sivewright were in the land of the living, which is hardly likely—for if he’d been alive he’d have come and tried to get money out of his poor old father before this—he couldn’t get into this house unless some one let him in.’

‘No, not unless some one let him in,’ repeated Lucius thoughtfully. He had begun to think Jacob Wincher was perhaps, after all, an honest man. But to believe this was to make the mystery darker than the darkest night. His ideas were all at sea, drifting which way he knew not.

‘Ferdinand Sivewright is dead,’ he said presently. ‘He will never trouble his father again.’

‘How do you know that, sir?’ asked Wincher eagerly.

‘Never mind how. I do know it, and that is enough. Now, Wincher, there’s no use in talking of this business any more, except in a practical manner. If you’re as innocent of any hand in the robbery as you pretend to be, you won’t shrink from inquiry.’

‘I do not shrink from inquiry, sir. If I did I shouldn’t have told you of the robbery.’

‘That might be a profound artifice, since the disappearance of these things must have been found out sooner or later.’

‘If I had been the thief I should have tried to stave off the discovery as long as I could,’ answered Jacob Wincher. ‘However, I don’t want to argue; the truth is the truth, that is enough for me.’

‘Very well, Mr. Wincher. What we have to do is to try and recover these missing articles. Unless the silver is melted down it ought to be easily traced. And the monstrance would be still more easily traced, I should think.’

‘That would depend upon circumstances, sir. Depend upon it, if the things were taken by a thief who knows their value, and knows the best market for them, he’ll send them abroad.’

‘They may be traced even abroad. What we have to do is to put the case at once into the best hands. I shall go straight from here to a detective officer, whom I’ve had some dealings with already, and get his advice. Now, is there much more property amongst the collection valuable enough to tempt a thief, and sufficiently portable for him to carry away?’

‘There is a great deal of china, small pieces, quite as valuable as the silver—not, perhaps, quite so easy to carry, but very nearly so.’

‘Then we must have the inside of this house guarded to-night.’

‘I can sit up here all night and keep watch.’

‘You would be no match for the thief, even if he came alone, which we are not certain he would. No, my dear Mr. Wincher, I will engage a properly qualified watchman; but remember, not one word of this to Miss Sivewright—or to your wife, who might be tempted to tell her young mistress.’

‘Very well, sir. I know how to hold my tongue. I’d be the last to go and frighten missy. But how about my old master? Is he to know?’

‘Not on any account. In his present weak state any violent agitation might be fatal, and we know that collecting these things has been the ruling passion of his life. To tell him that he is being robbed of these things might be to give him his death-blow.’

‘Very well, sir. I’ll obey orders.’

‘Good; and if I have wronged you, Mr. Wincher, by a groundless suspicion, you must pardon me. You will allow that appearances are somewhat against you.’

‘They are, sir, they are!’ answered the old man despondently.

‘However, time will show. I will send my watchman in at dusk. You could let him in at the back door, couldn’t you, without Miss Sivewright knowing anything about it?’

‘I could, sir. There’s a little door opening into the brewhouse, which opens out of the boothouse, as you may know.’

‘No, indeed! I know there are a lot of outbuildings, room enough to lodge a regiment; but I have never taken any particular notice of them.’

‘It’s a curious old place, Mr. Davoren, and goodness knows what it could have been used for in days gone by, unless it was for hiding folks away for no good. Perhaps you’d like to see the door I mean.’

‘I should,’ replied Lucius, ‘in order that I may explain its situation to the policeman.’

‘Come along with me then, sir, and I’ll show it you.’