“The ooff-bird,” suggested Latimer vulgarly.
“If you like. But even if it is found there will be a difficulty in reading its riddle.”
“Its riddle? Whatever do you mean?”
“What I say,” retorted Fuller impatiently. “The secret of the fortune is connected with some secret writing which has to do with the peacock.”
“But how can there be secret writing on a metal ornament?”
“I can’t say. I don’t know. There’s an enigma of some sort, a cryptogram.”
“This is very interesting but patchy,” said Dick, readjusting his big body in the chairs. “Suppose you tell me all from the beginning. Then I might get a glimmer of what you exactly mean.”
“Very good, then don’t interrupt.” And Alan related the strange story of George Inderwick and his faithful servant, who had preserved the secret so faithfully indeed that not even the master had been able to find the jewels. Latimer listened with great attention, and nodded when the story was concluded with an air of satisfaction.
“It’s quite a romance,” he declared slowly, when Fuller waited for comment, “and there is no doubt that the assassin stole the peacock by murdering Grison in order to get the Begum’s gems. No man would have been such a fool as to risk his neck otherwise for a paltry ornament.”
“I am not so sure of that, seeing how valuable the peacock is,” rejoined the other doubtfully. “It is—as I learned from my father, who saw this fetish of the Inderwicks—as large as a thrush; of pure gold elaborately worked, and is studded with precious stones of more or less price. The tail is spread out and is also jewelled. Now any of those Lascars or Dagoes in Mother Slaig’s boarding-house would not mind killing a man by cutting his throat to gain possession of such an object.”