Several days passed, and the late Mr. Clutterbuck's garden now resembled a ploughed field; but never a glint of gold had I struck yet, nor a glimmer of diamonds, nor the pale crisp delight of a bank-note or cheque.
Mr. Baines knew nothing, he protested, about anything whatsoever; he merely thought me a madman, and considered it the safer way to leave me entirely alone. I questioned him, now and again, as to whether he had ever observed the late lamented, whom he had served as factotum in life, employed in digging or in taking measurements in the garden; but to all these inquiries Mr. Baines gave answers courteously but plainly pointing to one and the same conclusion—namely, that though old Clutterbuck had been undoubtedly a "skinflint" (as he picturesquely described the parsimonious character of the deceased), yet he had always shown himself a sane skinflint, and therefore unlike the gentleman who now took his place as master of the establishment. By which Mr. Baines meant to infer that old Clutterbuck neither took measurements nor dug in the garden, and that I—who did both—must therefore be mad. He did not say so in as many words, but he made it pretty clear that this was his meaning.
There was no assistance to be got out of old Baines.
CHAPTER XL
JACK PROVES HIMSELF A GENIUS
After all, it was only natural that "the testator," desiring to give his heirs as much trouble as possible, should scarcely confide his secret to one who would probably reveal it, afterwards, to the first that offered him half a crown for the information.
At the end of the fourth day I was very tired and rather depressed. I had measured the garden from end to end and across, and dug down at every spot where, according to carefully thought out calculations, stretched strings would cross one another; I tried every dodge I could think of or that Jack could suggest. I gazed a dozen times at the old portrait, and could suck no inspiration from it; indeed, as regards that work of art, I had quite decided ere this that the thing was no more than a sickly joke on the part of its grim old original. I took Clutterbuck's age and measured it out in feet, and dug at the end of the seventy-first, and in inches, and diagonally in yards, starting each from the house, and the two first from the centre. I pulled up the old stump of a cut-down tree and looked inside the hole it left behind. I think I really tried nearly every device that the mind of man could conceive, but nothing had as yet come of my labours excepting fatigue and depression and stiffness.
Then, one day, on returning to the hotel, weary and cross by reason of repeated failure, I found Jack studying the portrait of old Clutterbuck, which annoyed me still more; for I was angry with the miser and his detestable expedients for keeping his money out of the hands of honest persons who had worked for it and fairly earned it.
"Look here, Peter," said Jack, smiling, "here's fun for you; see what I have found on the back of this work of art—read it for yourself!" He passed the portrait over to me.
I took it with, I am afraid, a growl of ill-temper, and read the words he had pointed out to me. They were written very faintly and in pencil on the back of the portrait, at a spot where the paper had become loose under the beading, and ran as follows—it was a doggerel rhyme, and this fact annoyed me still more in my ridiculously furious state of mind at the moment:—