"He didn't get all," said I. "A great deal of the monastic plate disappeared—clean vanished. It used to be said that a lot of it was hidden away or buried by its owners, but it's much more likely that it was stolen by the covetous and greedy folk of the neighbourhood—the big men, of course. Anyway, while a great deal was certainly sent by the commissioners to the king's treasury in London, a lot more—especially in out-of-the-way places and districts—just disappeared and was never heard of again. Up here in the North of England that was very often the case. And all this is merely a preface to what I'm going to tell you. Have you the least idea of what these documents are?"
"No," he replied. "Unless they're lists of something—I did make out that they might be, by the way the words and figures are arranged. Like—inventories."
"They are inventories!" I exclaimed. "Both. Written in crabbed caligraphy, too, but easy enough to read if you're acquainted with sixteenth century penmanship, spelling and abbreviations. Look at the first one. It is here described as an inventory of all the jewels, plate, et cetera, appertaining and belonging unto the Abbey of Forestburne, and it was made in the year 1536—this abbey, therefore, was one of the smaller houses that came under the £200 limit and was accordingly suppressed in the year just mentioned. Now look at the second. It also is an inventory—of the jewels and plate of the Priory of Mellerton, made in the same year, and similarly suppressed. But though both these houses were of the smaller sort, it is quite evident, from a cursory glance at these inventories that they were pretty rich in jewels and plate. By the term jewels is meant plate wherein jewels were set; as to the plate it was, of course, the sacramental vessels and appurtenances. And judging by these entries the whole mass of plate must have been considerable!"
"Worth a good deal, eh?" he asked.
"A great deal!—and if it's in existence now, much more than a great deal," I replied. "But I'll read you some of the items set down here—I'll read a few haphazard. They are set down, you see, with their weight in ounces specified, and you'll observe what a number of items there are in each inventory. We'll look at just a few. A chalice, twenty-eight ounces. Another chalice, thirty-six ounces. A mazer, forty-seven ounces. One pair candlesticks, fifty-two ounces. Two cruets, thirty-one ounces. One censer, twenty-eight ounces. One cross, fifty-eight ounces. Another cross, forty-eight ounces. Three dozen spoons, forty-eight ounces. One salt, with covering, twenty-eight ounces. A great cross, seventy-two ounces. A paten, sixteen ounces. Another paten, twenty ounces. Three tablets of proper gold work, eighty-five ounces in all. And so on and so on!—a very nice collection, Scarterfield, considering that these are only a few items at random, out of some seventy or eighty altogether. But we can easily reckon up the total weight—indeed, it's already reckoned up at the foot of each inventory. At Forestburne, you see, there was a sum total of two thousand two hundred and thirty-eight ounces of plate; at Mellerton, one thousand eight hundred and seventy ounces—so these two inventories represent a mass of about four thousand ounces. Worth having, Scarterfield!—in either the sixteenth or the twentieth century."
"And, in the main, it would be—what?" asked Scarterfield. "Gold, silver?"
"Some of it gold, some silver, a good deal of it silver-gilt," I replied. "I can tell all that by reading the inventories more attentively. But I've told you what a mere, cursory glance shows."
"Four thousand ounces of plate—some of it jewelled!" he soliloquised. "Whew! And what do you make of it, Mr. Middlebrook? I mean—of all that I've told you?"
"Putting everything together that you've told me," I answered, with some confidence, "I make this of it. This plate, originally church property, came—we won't ask how—into the hands of the late Lord Forestburne, and may have been in possession of his family, hidden away, perhaps, for four centuries. But at any rate, it was in his possession, and he deposited it with his bankers across the way. He may, indeed, not have known what was in it—again, he may have known. Now I take it that the dishonest temporary manager you told me of examined those chests, decided to appropriate their valuable contents, and enlisted the services of Netherfield Baxter in his nefarious labours. I think that these inventories were found in the chests—one, probably, in each—and that Baxter kept them out of sheer curiosity—you say he was a fellow of some education. As for the plate, I think he and his associate hid it somewhere—and, if you want my honest opinion, it was for it that Salter Quick was looking."
Scarterfield clapped his hand on the table.