“My lad,” he said, “I am the sixteenth baronet. You would be the seventeenth. Sentiment, but hell all the same, isn’t it? And, mark you, before we can sign the papers, I swear that Henry will shoot us. He’s living in a panic. I feel his eyes upon me wherever I go.”
“Is there any other way out at all?” Gregory asked despairingly.
His father once more disappeared into the inner room and returned carrying the Image.
“Gregory,” he confided, “I believe in the legend. If the jewels aren’t in this one they are in the other.”
There was something in Sir Bertram’s eyes which spoke of enterprise—something definite to be attempted. Gregory responded to it at once.
“I’ll go back to China and have another try if you say so,” he declared.
Sir Bertram glanced round the room as though he feared a listener. His voice, which was always low, became a whisper.
“You needn’t,” he confided. “The Soul is up at the Great House.”
CHAPTER II
Ralph Endacott, erstwhile professor of Oxford University and partner in the great Oriental house of Johnson and Company, now an English country gentleman, sat before wide-flung French windows leading out on to the lawn, sunken gardens and miniature park of the Great House at Market Ballaston. In front of him was an oak writing table upon which were pen and ink and a steel-clamped coffer, apparently of great age but attached to which was a modern Bramah lock. Upon the blotting paper were a few sheets of yellow, unfamiliar-looking, thick paper, covered with weird hieroglyphics; in his left hand a pair of magnifying glasses. The scent of the roses from outside had disturbed him in the midst of his labour. He rang a silver bell which stood upon the edge of the table—rang it a second time. Claire, a flutter of cool white, swung herself out of a hammock close at hand and approached lazily.