"That rush of brains to the head! Doesn't your cranium feel tight—almost bursting?"
"Seriously, comrade." Patch's idea rode superior to Jack's frivolity. "Just cast your mind back over what happened. Billy had concealed the Star, but, of course, he didn't know that it was safe, even under the boards. The business preyed on his mind. It worked on him to such an extent that in his sleep one night he came and took the Star away—to put it in some safer place, goodness knows where.
"Then, we find that the Star is missing—how long after Billy shifted it, we don't know. But it was gone, we all know that. Billy here knew nothing about his sleep-walking—didn't even know that he was addicted to sleep-walking. And so he remembered nothing of having moved the Star. Of course, he worried some more about the thing, and did the same thing again—went out, got the Star from where he had hidden it, and was bringing it to another place, when Daw happened to spot him, and, of course, pounced on it."
"By Jingo!" said Fane, regarding Patch with an admiring eye.
"Yes, that's what happened, comrades. And goodness knows where Billy would have put it if he hadn't been pulled up—perhaps in the Head's waistcoat, or else up the fireplace. Lucky things panned out as they did, eh?"
"I keep telling Billy he ought to go on the Stock Exchange," said Jack. "His luck's blown in the bottle, all wool and a yard wide!"
"Of course, we'll have to guard against this sort of thing in the future, however good his luck is. Next time coincidences might fail to—to—"
"—to coincide," finished Jack brightly. "Exactly. The best thing for us to do is to let me hide the Star, and then Billy can't get at it without my telling him, sleep-walking or otherwise."
"That's the ticket! You take the thing and hide it in some secure place or other—be sure we don't make a miss of it, this time—and then you can tell Fane and me, but not Billy. I don't think I walk in my sleep, and, as for Fane, he walks often enough when he should be asleep, but that's a different matter."
And so it was arranged. Jack concealed the Star that afternoon, in the most unlikely of places. He got an old rubber-grip from a bat, and inserted the Star in this, while he tied both ends securely with twine. The whole thing he attached to a fine fishing-line. Walking along to the river, he flung the Star into the water, and fixed the end of the line to the root of a tree some six inches under water. The line would never be seen; and unless something very like a miracle occurred, the package could hardly be recovered from the thick mud at the bottom of the river. He breathed a sigh of relief.