“As in the present instance,” I suggested.
“To be sure! This,” she said, “is by no means the first time Tibbie and I have been suddenly bereft of his presence. He departs! and no more’s heard or seen of him until a reappearance as unexpected as his disappearance. And usually—indeed, I suppose always—when he returns he brings things with him.”
“The thing is obvious,” I remarked. “He’s been hunting for curiosities.”
“Perhaps! But why in such secrecy?”
“Part of the game. The more secrecy, the more pleasure. Human nature—antiquarian human nature.”
“Well, about twelve or fifteen months ago he was away like that,” she said. “I don’t know where he’d been, he never tells. But when he returned the copper box was with him. He polished it up the night he came home. Of course, I admired it, equally, of course, I asked him where he’d got it. All he said was what he always does say, he’d just picked it up. Off the street, no doubt, or on the moor, or in an omnibus, or on a train! But that’s Jimmie. And on the same occasion he brought back some half-dozen old books—very old, apparently rare books—about which I noticed a certain thing, though I never said a word to him about it—no good!”
“What was the certain thing?”
“The books are upstairs in his library; you may have seen them. In each there’s a book-plate with a coat-of-arms, and a legend exactly like those on the copper box.”
“I’ve seen the books. I saw the coat-of-arms, too,” said I. “Odd! And—significant.”
“Why significant?”