“Are you sure he came in?” said my aunt.
“Well, no—not sure,” I replied; “he left us to come in. But, by the way, Aunt, where would my uncle put plate or money that he wanted to keep in safety?”
“Oh, in the strong chest in his little office here,” said my aunt, leading the way to a small cupboard of a room just large enough for his desk, a stool, and an old sea-chest in which he kept his books, and, it seemed, such money as he had not in use.
But my uncle had evidently not been there, for the door was closed, and, after a moment’s thought, Mrs Landell remembered that her husband had not asked her for the key, which was in her pocket.
We waited ten minutes, after which both Tom and I went out to make fresh inquiries, but without avail; then, pausing in the doorway, Tom said to me in a low tone:
“Mas’r Harry, you always laughed at me, and said I was making bugbears; but we’ve been watched and dodged ten times as much as you think for.”
“Perhaps so, Tom,” I said moodily.
“And I don’t want to make no more bugbears now,” continued Tom; “but I’m sure as if some one told me, or as if I saw it all myself, that your uncle has been dropped on, and they’ve got him and the gold too this time, Mas’r Harry.”
“Absurd, Tom! Why, he had not half-a-dozen yards to go.”
“Then they was half-a-dozen yards too many,” said Tom sullenly. “We didn’t ought to have left him, Mas’r Harry.”