“Ghostly fingers!” supplied Miss Thane.
“Oh, Ludovic, there is a passage?” breathed Eustacie.
He laughed. “Lord, no! It’s just a priest’s hole, that’s all.”
“How wretched!” said Miss Thane, quite disgusted. “It makes me lose all heart.”
“If there is not a passage we must do without one,” decreed Eustacie stoutly. “One must be practical. Tout même, it is a pity there is not a passage. I thought it would lead from the Court to the Dower House. It would have been magnifique! We might have found treasure!”
“That is precisely what I was thinking,” agreed Miss Thane. “An old iron chest, full of jewels.”
Sir Tristram broke in on these fancies with a somewhat withering comment. “Since we are not searching for treasure, and no passage exists save in your imaginations, this discussion is singularly unprofitable,” he said. “Where is the panel, Ludovic?”
“There you have the matter in a nutshell,” confessed Ludovic. “I know my uncle used to use it as a strong-room, and I remember Sylvester showing it to me when I was a lad, but what I can’t for the life of me recall is which room it’s in.”
“That,” said Sir Tristram, “is, to say the least of it, unfortunate, since the Dower House is panelled almost throughout.”
“I think it’s either in the library or the dining-room,” said Ludovic. “There are two tiers of pillars with a lot of fluted pilasters and carvings. I dare say I shall recognize it when I see it. You twist one of the bosses on the frieze between the tiers, and one of the square panels below slides back.”