"You'll see—in my cabin. If you'll trust me and come."
I went with him, my heart pounding as I entered the room. It seemed as if some visible trace of tragedy must remain. But there was nothing. All was in order. The brandy bottle had disappeared—into the sea, no doubt. The tumbler so cleverly taken from this cabin was clean, and in its place. There were no bits of broken glass from the phial to be seen. And the odour of bitter almonds with which the place had reeked was no longer very strong. The salt breeze blowing through two wide-open portholes would kill it before dawn.
"But where is the thing?" I asked.
"In the study," Roger answered. He motioned me to pass through the curtained archway, as I had passed before; and there I had to cover my lips with my hand to press back a cry. The desk, the big chair I had sat in, and a sofa were covered with objects familiar to me as my own face in a looking-glass. There was Queen Anne's silver tea-service and Napoleon's green-and-gold coffee cups. There were Li Hung Chang's box of red lacquer and the wondrous Buddha; there were the snuff-boxes, the miniatures, the buckles and brooches; the fat watch of George the Fourth; half unrolled lay Charles the First's portrait and sketch, and the Gobelin panel which had been the Empress Josephine's. In fact, all the treasures stolen from Courtenaye Abbey! Here they were in Roger Fane's cabin on board the Naiad, and they had come out of a coffin found floating in the sea!
When I could think at all, I tried to think the puzzle out, and I tried to do it alone, for Roger was in no state to bend his mind to trifles. But, in his almost pathetic gratitude, he wished to help me; and when we had locked up the things in three drawers of his desk, we sat together discussing theories. Something must be planned, something settled, before day!
It was Roger who unfolded the whole affair before my eyes, unfolded it so clearly that I could not doubt he was right. My trust—everyone's trust—in the Barlows had been misplaced. They were the guilty ones! If they had not organized the plot, they had helped to carry it through as nobody else could have carried it through.
I told Roger of the two demobilized nephews about whom—if he had heard—he had forgotten. I explained that they were twin sons of a brother of old Barlow's, who had taken them to Australia years ago when they were children. Vaguely I recalled that, when I was very young, Barlow had worried over news from Australia: his nephews had been in trouble of some sort. I fancied they had got in with a bad set. But that was ancient history! The twins had evidently "made good." They had fought in the war, and had done well. They must have saved money, or they could not have bought the old house on the Dorset coast which had belonged to the Barlows for generations. It was at this point, however, that Roger stopped me. Had the boys "saved" money, or—had they got it in a way less meritorious? Had they needed, for pressing reasons of their own, to possess that place on the coast? The very question called up a picture—no, a series of pictures—before my eyes. I saw, or Roger made me see, almost against my will, how the scheme might have been worked—must have been worked!—from beginning to end; and how at last it had most strangely failed. Again, the Fate that had sailed on the Storm! For an hour we talked, and made our plan almost as intricately as the thieves or their backers had made theirs. Then, as dawn paled the sky framed by the open portholes, I slipped off to my own cabin. I did not go to bed (I could not, where she had lain!) and I didn't sleep. But I curled up on the long window seat, with cushions under my head, and thought. I thought of a thousand things: of Roger's plan and mine, of how I could return the heirlooms yet keep the secret; of what Sir Jim would say when he learned of their reappearance; and, above all, I thought of what our discovery in the coffin would mean for Roger Fane.
Yes, that was far more important to him even than to me! For the fact that the coffin had been the property of thieves meant that no claim would ever be made to it. The mystery of its present occupant would therefore remain a mystery till the end of time, and—Roger was safe!
The next day we reached St. Heliers, after a quick voyage through blue, untroubled waters; and there we came in for all the red tape that Roger had foreseen, if not more. But how inoffensive, even pleasing, is red tape to a man saved from handcuffs and a prison cell!