The kitchen drew blank.
“I never thought he was here,” she said. “No, it was Uncle Isaac.”
Mr. Superbus, back in The Study, propounded a startling theory.
“There’s such things as subterranean passages,” he said. “I’ve seen ’em. You push back a panel and there’s a flight of stairs, leading to an underground vault. You touch a spring——”
“There are no springs to be touched at 61 Cheynel Gardens,” she said, “and no panels, and no underground vaults except the cellar where the furnace is. Go down and satisfy yourself.”
Mr. Superbus countered graciously that her word was sufficient.
The hour was a quarter after four o’clock. Mr. Superbus lit the fire, going very slowly down to the kitchen to find the kindling wood, and coming very swiftly up again. His teeth were chattering: it was very chilly in the kitchen, he said.
“There was nothing to hurt you in the kitchen,” she said.
“Hurt me? I’d like to see the thing that tried it on! I don’t know what fear is, ma’am. All our family is that way. My brother Augustus walks through a churchyard every night from the Duchesses’ Arms——”