"Now of those three," went on Lord Galton, rather more slowly, and separating his words, "the man who has got it is our miserable old family goat, Cousin Bill...."
The Home Secretary started.
Lord Galton explains to the Home Secretary his
theory—or rather, certitude—upon the
whereabouts of the Great Emerald.
"Yes, I know what you'll say ... he got the fright of his life over the Mullingar Diamond. You'd say he'd never dream of doing it in the house of the head of the family." (A dignified look passed over the features of the Chieftain of the de Bohuns.) "Then he's such a clumsy old ass that you can't imagine him doing it so quickly. After all, it took him half an hour to fish the Mullingar Diamond out of an open drawer, and even then he left things topsy-turvy. You'll say all that, and if I were just guessing I'd half agree with you. But I'm not guessing. And I tell you he's got it. I don't pretend to do any of this private detective work, and I've never read one of their rotten mystery stories in my life. That's how I've kept my common sense clear—men who are blown upon need their wits about them. I know Bill's got it for a very simple reason—I've seen it in his hand with my own eyes. Some one told the old goat that the place to hide anything was where it would be most obvious and simple. He's got it in the left-hand pocket of that damned smelly overcoat he wears; but he's such a nervous old balmy that he can't help fingering it the whole time; and when he thinks no one's looking he pulls it half out and looks at it furtively out of the corner of his eye. Dons are always as mad as hatters. He did it three separate times while we were out walking just now. He couldn't help himself. He's too much shut up inside his own addled head to notice other people. And I'll tell you something else, which is also common sense. He won't take it out of that pocket till he's left the house. An overcoat's the only thing they don't brush or fold up, in this house; you're old-fashioned, with these things on pegs and not on marble tables. He knows that. It'll hang there on the peg till he goes away. That's the whole point of leaving it in such a place.... And it's there now. You look for it there, and you'll find it."
The Home Secretary put on his expression of gravity in the third degree—the expression with which he would meet a deputation for saving an innocent man from the gallows and gratify them with a majestic refusal.
"What you say, Tommy," he began, slowly, "is very serious. Very serious indeed. In my judgment ..."
"Oh, look here," said Lord Galton impatiently, "cut out all that! He's not in the hall. He went off to the library, and when he gets there he strikes root. There'll be no one about—they're laying the table. Come with me, and I'll prove it."
"I hesitate ..." began the Home Secretary. His powerful young relative, by way of reply, hooked him by the arm, unlocked the door, and marched him straight out into the hall. The ghost of what might well have been an ancestor—for we all have such things—must have mourned, if, as such things do, it had taken up its kennel in a suit of armour standing by the side of the fireplace in the hall: it would have mourned to see the head of the de Bohuns stand by while the deed was done.