Brion, rising erect, turned speechless to Joan, and she to him; and then with a sudden impulse they held to one another and both looked down. They saw a long wooden coffer of stout oak, measuring, it might be, three feet by one, with a depth of eighteen inches, running readily on little wheels, and full to the brim of gold and precious stones. He gasped, and looked into her face.
‘The picaroon’s booty,’ he said, in an amazed, awestruck voice—and could say no more. She brought him to his wits with a pull and whisper:—
‘O, Brion!’
‘And O, Joan!’ he cried. ‘Do you see? It was this secret the poor murdered maid unearthed; and, after her, Melton.’
Suddenly he broke from her, and darting for the slab, pulled it this way and that.
‘I understand,’ he cried—‘I understand. Come here, Joan, while I show you.’
And when she ran to him, she saw. What might have been taken for a great stone at the base of the wall proved on examination to have been a thick leaden slab, made to fit like a door into its place, and so treated with roughcast on a heated and liquid surface as to be rendered indistinguishable from the other stones about it. By what device it had been made originally to open and disclose its inner secrets did not appear, the whole thing having been so hacked and wrenched to force it from its position as to destroy any clue that might otherwise have been to the nature of its mechanism.
‘But how did he discover it?’ said Brion; ‘since I know, from my own experiments, that no sounding would be enough.’
That interest seemed to absorb him for the moment above any other. He puzzled, clutching at his hair. Suddenly his face lit up:—
‘I have it!’ he cried jubilantly. ‘It was the brazier set against the wall melted some of the lead and gave him the first of the clue. That was why I found it moved, the second time I went down to see him, and the bed put against the wall where it had been. ’Twas to hide from me his discovery. And afterwards he must have gone to work on the lead, and by degrees, melting and working a hole in it, learnt what was within. Then, when once his hands were free and he was secure of the house, he must have come back with that crowbar and finished what he had begun. It is all as clear as daylight, and eke the reason why he was so anxious, when I brought him forth, to see the clue to the secret chamber shut away. He feared even then that some overbold quidnunc might venture in, and, discovering the truth while he lay helpless in the house, ruin his whole design.’