“Where are these infernal Images?” Major Holmes asked.
“They have been moved upstairs into my apartments,” Henry Ballaston intervened. “If it would afford you any satisfaction to inspect them, I will take you there with pleasure.”
“I should like to see them,” Major Holmes decided.
They all returned to the house, Gregory quitting his chair with an air of reluctance. The two Images stood in a small sitting room opening out from Henry Ballaston’s bedroom at the top of the house; an apartment of extraordinary, almost monastic simplicity. They stood side by side on an old black oak bureau, and against the white of the walls they showed up with almost glaring effect.
“The Body and the Soul,” Gregory pointed out. “I don’t think they have ever been worth what poor old Bill Hammonde and I went through for them. They got Bill, too. Good chap, he was!”
“The legend is,” Sir Bertram explained politely, “that those heads are filled with jewels. Yet we have never been able to discover an opening or aperture of any sort.”
“If there is any truth in the story,” Major Holmes suggested, “why don’t you break them up?”
Sir Bertram shivered.
“That, at least,” he said, “one would keep for a last effort. Those Images, Holmes, are nearly a thousand years old, and if you are any judge of such things, you will see at once that they were carved by a great artist. With their history I should imagine that their value at Christie’s would be at least several thousand pounds each, so long as they are intact.”
Major Holmes took one into his hands and set it down again, amazed at the weight.