“You may be right,” he said. “That’s a good point.”
“But whether he knows or not,” I went on, “the thing for us to do is to solve the puzzle. He certainly hasn’t had a chance to remove the ‘treasure’ yet, and we must see that he doesn’t get a chance. Where do you suppose grandaunt would conceal her property, Mr. Chester?”
“It seems to me,” answered Mr. Chester, slowly, “that Mrs. Nelson would not bury the papers, or conceal them anywhere outside the house. Moisture works havoc with securities of that kind, and to bury them would be the very worst thing which could be done with them, even in a box like this. Besides, she would naturally want them where she could keep her eye on them, and have ready access to them. Bonds usually have coupons attached to them which have to be detached and sent in for payment of interest. Most people keep securities of that kind in a safe-deposit box at a bank. I believe that you will find them somewhere in the house—in a place that was under Mrs. Nelson’s eyes constantly.”
“But the rose of Sharon, sir,” I objected. “That could scarcely be in the house.”
“No,” he agreed slowly, “no; I confess that puzzles me. Yet it seems most improbable that Mrs. Nelson would do anything so foolish as to bury her securities. She would be too anxious, I imagine, to have them within reach, like a miser with his gold. I am tempted to believe that the ‘rose of Sharon’ does not refer to a bush or a tree, but to something else which we have not discovered as yet. It might be a piece of furniture, or a picture, or a plant—almost anything, in fact. I would scrutinize everything in the house carefully to see if the appellation, ‘rose of Sharon,’ cannot be made to fit.”
Dick groaned.
“There’s no end to it,” he said, mournfully. “It seems to me that ‘rose of Sharon’ can mean about everything under the sun.”
“Well,” said Mr. Chester, smiling, “I would certainly look for it very carefully in the house; though, of course, it will do no harm to continue your search outdoors, too.”
“I told Biffkins, a while ago,” observed Dick, “that we should probably have to dig up the whole place and tear down the house before we were through. It seems to me the easiest way would be to scare it—”
But he stopped suddenly without completing the sentence, and we were all too preoccupied to notice.