"I secured it from Morton," he remarked, attacking the egg viciously.
"Secured it?" exclaimed McAllister.
The Governor-General nodded ambiguously.
Aunt Sophia during the course of the recital had become almost hysterical, and now sat wringing her hands in the greatest agitation. Suddenly she broke forth:
"I told Basil he had been too hasty! But he would have it that there was nothing else to do! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Why don't you tell him what you've done?"
"What in thunder have you done?" asked McAllister, now convinced beyond peradventure that his uncle was a candidate for the nearest insane asylum.
Lord Lyndhurst became very red, stammered, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
"Yes, secured it! Morton, if you must know it, is locked in the clothes-closet. I locked him!"
"He's in there!" suddenly wailed Aunt Sophia. "Basil put him in! And now the jewelry's no one knows where, and there's a man in the room, and I'm afraid to stay and Basil's afraid to go for fear he may get out, and——"
She was interrupted by a smothered voice that came from within the closet. McAllister was startled, for there was something faintly, vaguely familiar about it.