“Oh,” she cried with a grasp.
“St. Peter’s Pool, the triangle, red,” murmured Alan, still perplexed, till the feminine intuition of the girl came to his aid.
“It’s the well,” she cried, “St. Peter’s Well in St. Peter’s Dell, can’t you see. The jewels are hidden in some place marked with a red triangle. Oh I am sure of it, because the word is ‘red,’ and the stones of the triangle are rubies.”
“By heaven, Marie! I believe you are right.”
“Of course I am. Simon Ferrier came back to England to hide the jewels.”
“No Marie, he returned to give them to Julian Inderwick. But since that man was a profligate and would have squandered them, Ferrier evidently hid them somewhere about St. Peter’s Well, or pool, as he calls it on the tail of the bird, and marked the hiding-place with a red triangle. And of course, if George Inderwick had been able to read the riddle he would easily have found the gems. My word!” Alan stared at the golden bird, now reft of the secret it had held for so long, “and to think that the solution is so easy after all. Why those rings such as I have described my grandmother having, are by no means rare.”
“I believe Simon Ferrier did make this silver one,” said Marie, fingering the article thoughtfully, “since it is a kind of key to the riddle.”
Alan shrugged his shoulders. “I believe that George Inderwick found it as hard to guess as the mystery of the peacock. At all events he never arrived at the solution of the thing. And so easy, so easy after all.”
“Perhaps the very ease made it difficult to guess,” suggested Marie.
“Like Columbus and the egg,” laughed Fuller, taking back a tray of gems to the hiding-place. “Let us put these away, Marie, and then go down to the well. We must close the panel in case that man Moon left behind should come in and learn too much.” He was thinking of the stiletto as he spoke.