The Hon. Richard Hilton stared at the type-written letter with distinct feelings of pleasure. This is what he read:—
Sir,—I have the honour to inform you of your election as a member of the Club, conditional upon your attendance on the 5th proximo with the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, procured in the usual way.—Yours faithfully,
The Hon. Secretary.
"That's good," he ejaculated. "Ribston's a trump. But what on earth's the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, and where is it to be found?"
Mr. Hilton's library was chiefly devoted to sport and fiction, and he could find no reference to it therein. He had therefore to make inquiries outside, when he learnt that the Great Seal of the United Kingdom was the property of the Lord Chancellor for the time being, that it was a very important object indeed, its impression being requisite at the foot of the highest documents of State; and, consequently, that its unexpected absence might very well upset the nation's affairs and incidentally bring serious trouble upon anyone who had tampered with it.
Mr. Hilton's sporting instincts were roused. "It seems to me," he thought, "that this is going to be the best thing I have had on since I walked across Thibet disguised as a second-class Mahatma. But where does the Chancellor keep the thing?"
He skimmed through many biographies of Lord Chancellors with very little result. One of them, it appeared, kept the Great Seal with his silver, another always carried it about with him in a special pocket, and slept with it under his pillow; while a third stored it at the Bank of England. History was discreetly silent as to how the other hundred and one keepers of the Great Seal guarded their property.
Mr. Richard Hilton contemplated his notes with disgust. "I never could rely on books," he said. "There's nothing for it but to find out for myself. The present man probably keeps it where any other common-sense fellow would. He'll have a library, so it may be there. He's a good liver, so it may be in a secret bin in his wine cellar; he's a sportsman, so it may be in a gun-case under his bed. I shall have to look round and find out. Where does he live?"
His lordship's town residence was Shipley House, Kensington Gore. Hilton took a walk in that direction. The house looked as unpromising and unsympathetic a subject for robbery as a metropolitan magistrate could have wished. The spiked railings in front and the high wall at the back would have suggested to most people the impossibility of the enterprise; but Mr. Hilton simply noted these items with interest, and then adjourned to a light lunch at his club to think the matter out.
It was one o'clock in the morning when Mr. Hilton scaled the wall at the rear of the Lord Chancellor's house. Though it was nine feet high, it presented no difficulties to an ex-lieutenant in the navy; but he got over carefully, for he was in evening dress, believing that to be the safest disguise for a general burglar. He dropped lightly on the turf, and then made his way across to the house and commenced a careful inspection of the basement windows. To his intense surprise, he found the lower sash of one of them to be open. This astonishing piece of good luck meant the saving of at least an hour. With a cheerful heart he entered the house, finding his way by the electric flashlight which he carried.