“It’s impossible. I’ve tried in every way to do so, and am still quite in the dark as to how that jewelled bird can indicate the hiding-place.”
Marie took up the luck of her family and turned it round upside down, and looked at it from every side. “It does seem impossible,” she confessed with a reluctant sigh. “I suppose we must give up trying to guess its riddle for the present. Where shall we put it, Alan?”
“In the cupboard, I suppose,” said the lawyer carelessly, and pointing to the dark oak press, out of which Sorley had produced the peacock when it first appeared on the scene; “it has always been there.”
“If so,” said Marie shrewdly, “someone—Miss Grison for one—may know where to find it, and she is quite capable of telling Mr. Bakche who is in league with her, I am sure. No, Alan, I shall put it along with Uncle Ran’s private collection of gems,” and she moved towards the panel marked with a cross, which Fuller remembered very well.
“Can you open it, Marie?” he asked, walking beside her to the place.
“Yes! See!” She touched the hidden spring, and the panel slid aside into its groove. “Uncle Ran showed me how to work this before he left, in case—as he said—he should never come back.”
“Hum!” muttered Alan, staring into the dark recess with its many shelves, “he seems to have his doubts as to whether his innocence will ever be clearly proved. Put the peacock back on the table, Marie, and let us look at the gems. If your uncle does not return they belong to you.”
“Yes, he said that,” replied Miss Inderwick, putting down the peacock near the black bag. “Many of the gems are bought with my money. I always thought that you were hard on Uncle Ran, dear; he saved money for me.”
“Marie, I have every wish to think well of your uncle,” confessed Alan, “but it seems to me that he does not act quite straightly. For one thing he undoubtedly treated Miss Grison very badly, and——” Fuller checked himself, as it did not seem necessary at the moment to reveal the strange truth regarding the woman’s claim to be Mrs. Sorley.
“And what, dear?” asked the girl innocently.