"Brother Egbert?" echoed Jack, staring at the inventor open-mouthed. "Has he gone off his rocker?" he inquired anxiously of the other two. "Poor fellow—brains all addled. Or perhaps poached. I knew he would do it. My advice is, Patchie, wear an ice-pack on your fevered brow."
"It's all right, comrade," Septimus assured him. "Here's another occasion to thank your uncle Patch! Brother Egbert, I may explain, is my brother, and he'll be down here to-night. He's making a trip down the coast on his motor-bike, and he intended to call in at the school on the 14th, which is to-day."
"Well, what about it?"
"My good baboon," said Patch pityingly, "don't you see? Egbert will be only too pleased to take Billy, or myself, in pursuit of the jacket and—the Black Star. I think I should go, because it was really my fault that the coat went. Edgar A. Poe didn't mention anything about stray accidents that might happen in any good, well-regulated family, or their bearing on his no-concealment wheeze. I confess I begin to lose my respect for Edgar. The next hiding-place for the Star will be a most abstruse one, when we get the thing back—"
"If we do," supplemented Billy. "Look here, Patch, that was a very defective plan of yours, I agree, but I think I'll make the trip with brother Egbert, all the same."
There came a rapping at the door, and Jack invited the rapper to come in. A singular-looking young man entered, took a comprehensive glance over its occupants, and then spoke in a drawling, bored voice.
"Permit me to introduce myself," he said. "I am Egbert, fifth Baron Patch. Sounds good, doesn't it, that phrase, 'barren patch'? Rumour hath it that one Septimus, a juvenile relative of mine, is to be found in the precincts of this study. Ah, I see I am right—how are you, brother?"
"Bursting with robust health and goodwill," declared Septimus modestly. "See here, though, you've just arrived at the right moment. A rather interesting business has been going on here, and—can I tell him everything, Billy?"
Billy Faraday nodded, and Septimus explained the whole matter of the Star and its disappearance to his attentive brother, who resembled a collection of walking-sticks as he half-lay, half-sat in one of the chairs, his big head resting in his open palm.
"Quite a decent little mystery," he commented, when his brother's account had finished. "I twig what you want me to do—give chase, and all that sort of rot, what? Well, if any of you would care for a rough, bumpy, perilous journey on the back of a big 7-9, then I shall be happy to oblige. As I said to the Duke last week, when he asked me for a fiver, 'Dee-lighted, old bean!'"