“The truth is sometimes extraordinary,” the other agreed. “You can easily verify, however, the correctness of the main points of my statements. I can give you references, for instance, to my bankers in London, who will assure you that I was the head of the firm in which Mr. Endacott was partner, that I am a man of wealth and reputation, and in a position to know the truth concerning these matters. Gregory Ballaston half recognised me, but as out there I passed as a Chinaman, he is only suspicious. I adopted the garb and speech of the Chinese very early in life, because no confessed European has a chance of trading successfully in the interior of the country. Gregory Ballaston is a young man against whom I have no ill-feeling—in fact, I rather like him—but Endacott was my associate for twenty years and I was responsible for the Image being in his possession. It was arranged between us that, with the help of a friend of his at the British Museum, he should obtain a translation of the documents we had acquired concerning it, and we should then, on my return to England, discuss the possibility of the existence of the jewels. I am very certain that in his lifetime he would never willingly have parted with the Image to Gregory Ballaston.”
“And you say that that Image is now at Ballaston Hall?” the Major demanded.
“It is there at the present moment,” was the unequivocal reply. “I lunched there to-day and saw it, together with the fellow Image which Gregory Ballaston brought home.”
The Chief Constable moved uneasily in his chair. The story to which he had listened was barely credible, but there was something very convincing about this rather ponderous man of slow speech and steady eyes.
“You are a stranger in these parts, Mr. Johnson,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “You probably don’t know that the Ballastons are one of our oldest and most prominent county families. Sir Bertram is Lord Lieutenant at the present moment. He hunts the hounds and occupies a great position.”
“I am aware of that,” Mr. Johnson replied. “I also know, as probably you do, that the family are in great financial straits.”
“It comes to this then,” the Chief Constable summed up unwillingly. “You are practically accusing young Ballaston not only of theft but of the murder of your late partner, Endacott.”
“I have not gone so far as that,” the other pointed out. “I have supplied you with a motive for the murder. I have given you information that property belonging to the dead man—equally to me, by-the-by—is now in the possession of the Ballastons.”
“But is this Image really of great value?” Major Holmes asked. “Leaving out the other improbabilities, could its possession be considered as a possible incentive for the perpetration of such an atrocious crime?”
“The jewels supposed to be concealed in the two Images,” Mr. Johnson confided, “are estimated, if they exist at all, to be worth anything up to a million pounds. It was Sir Bertram who first heard the story when he was in the Diplomatic Service and persona grata at the late Emperor’s Court in China. He passed it on to his son, and without doubt the two together planned the expedition.”