"Not I! It weren't none of my business. I'd enough trouble on my own account just then, for me to want to be mixed up in anyone else's affairs."
"I remember!" exclaimed Mrs. Gartley. "You was doin' time. You got three months hard for puttin' a bullet through the keeper's hat."
"It don't matter what I were doin'," said Bob sulkily. "At any rate, I'd an engagement wot kept me from puttin' myself in a public position. When I gets back to Heathwell, do you think I were anxious to go and interview Mr. Wilfred Ledbury just then, and tell him my views? No, I'd had enough of lawyers for the present. They was inclined to doubt my word, somehow, and it hurts an honest man's feelin's to be told as he's a liar. I thought I'd keep my eye, though, on that little cupboard, but I found there'd been an auction, and it were sold. I couldn't get on the track of it, do what I would, or hear who'd a-got it, and I gives it up as a bad job. Then one day that young lady comes into the house paintin' our Hugh. There were an oak cupboard in her picture, and I knows it again in a minute."
"You don't mean to say——" cried Gwethyn, springing to her feet.
"Aye, but I do! That be the very one as I sees old Mr. Ledbury put the envelope inside!"
Gwethyn and Githa left the cottage in a state of the wildest excitement. They went straight back to school, and ran upstairs to the studio. Fortunately no one was in the room, so they were able at once to begin investigations on the little oak cupboard. They pulled out all the small drawers, and poked and pushed in every possible direction, but not a sign of a secret hiding-place could they find. The wood at the back of the recess in the middle seemed perfectly solid, and could not be made to budge by the fraction of an inch. They were very baffled and crest-fallen. After their success in finding the moving panel at the Grange, it was the more particularly disappointing.
"I suppose Bob Gartley really did see what he says he saw?" ventured Githa rather doubtfully. "I wonder he never mentioned it before."
"Reading between the lines, I should say he had two good reasons for his silence," replied Gwethyn. "He was probably at the Grange that night on a dishonest errand, and didn't want the matter investigated, and also perhaps he thought he might find a chance some time to appropriate the notes. He spoke very regretfully about them."
"Do you think it could have been he who tried to break into Aireyholme?"