There was nothing to be seen but a year's dust
Alfred was dumb-foundered, and a cold perspiration began to gather on his brow. He saw at once a false move would be fatal to him.
“Well, sir,” said Vane grimly. “Where are they?”
Alfred caught sight of a small cupboard; he searched it; it was empty. Baker and Cooper grinned at his delusion quietly, but so that Vane might see that formula. Alfred returned to the bed and shook it. Cooper and Baker left off grinning; Alfred's quick eye caught this, and he shook the bed violently, furiously.
“Ah!” said Mr. Vane, “I hear a chink.”
“It is an iron bedstead and old,” suggested Baker.
Alfred tore off the bed-clothes, and then the mattress. Below the latter was a framework, and below the framework a receptacle about six inches deep, five feet long, and three broad, filled with chains, iron belts, wrist-locks, muffles, and screw-locked hobbles, &c.; a regular Inquisition.
If Baker had descended from the Kemble family, instead of rising from nothing, he could not have acted better. “Good Heavens!” cried he, “where do these come from? They must have been left here by the last proprietor.”
Vane replied only by a look of contempt, and ordered Cooper to go and ask Mr. Tollett to come to him.
Alfred improved the interval. “Sir,” said he, “all my delusions, fairly tested, will turn out like this.”