The gentleman who was testing his craft with the lock looked up at her with a significant, doubtful inquiry. “The robbers?” he drawled, slightingly.
They possibly number thousands in this wicked world. Their deeds have filled many court records, and their reluctant carcasses many a prison. But the man does not live who credits their proximity on the faith of a woman’s statement. “The robbers?” he drew in his lower lip humorously. “Where do you think they were working?”
“Come, I can show you exactly.” Paula sprang up with alacrity.
He rose without hesitation, but he took his revolver from the table and thrust it into his pistol-pocket. While he did not believe her, perhaps he thought that stranger things have happened. They did not carry the lamp. The moon’s radiance poured through all the shattered windows of the great ruin with a splendor that seemed a mockery of the imposing proportions, the despoiled decorations, the lavish designs of the fresco, the poor travesties of chandeliers, making shift here and there to return a crystal reflection where once light had glowed refulgent.
Floyd-Rosney had sat silent for a moment, as if dumfounded. Then he slowly and uncertainly threw his legs athwart the bench and rose as if to follow. But the two had returned before he could leave the room, the “doubting Thomas” of an explorer with his hands full of tools and an expression of blank amazement on his face.
“Somebody has been working at that wall,” he announced, as if he could scarcely constrain his own acceptance of the fact. “The wainscot has been freshly ripped out, but there is nothing at all in the hollow of the pilaster. Mrs. Floyd-Rosney examined it herself.”
“You were looking for another find, eh?—like a cat watching a hole where she has just caught a mouse,” said Floyd-Rosney to his wife with his misfit jocularity.
No one sought to reply. Every eye was on Adrian Ducie, who had found a cold chisel among the tools and was working now at the hinges and now at the lock, wherever there seemed best promise of entrance. The hinges were forced apart finally, the lock was broken, and once more the box was opened here where it was packed forty-odd years ago. A covering of chamois lay over the top, and as Adrian Ducie put it aside with trembling fingers the lamplight gloated down on a responsive glitter of gold and silver, with a glint here and there, as of a precious stone. There was obviously insufficient room in the box for the vanished table service of the family silver, but several odd pieces of such usage were crowded in, of special antiquity of aspect, probably heirlooms, and thus saved at all hazards. The method of packing had utilized the space within to the fraction of an inch. Adrian drew out a massive gold goblet filled with a medley of smaller articles, a rare cameo bracelet, an emerald ring, an old seal quaintly mounted, a child’s sleeve-bracelets, a simple ornament set with turquoise, and a diamond necklace, fit for a princess. None of these were in cases, even the protection of a wrapping would have required more space than could be spared.
“You know that face?” Ducie demanded, holding a miniature out to Floyd-Rosney, catching the lamplight upon it.
“Can’t say I do,” Floyd-Rosney responded, cavalierly and with apparent indifference.