He waited during a moment’s silent reflection, then, leaning back in his chair, and using his cigarette occasionally to point his remarks, he began to address us pretty much as if we constituted a jury.
“The firm of which Sir Charles Sperrigoe is senior partner,” he said, “has for many years acted as legal advisers to a very ancient family in the Midlands, the Palkeneys of Palkeney Manor, whose coat-of-arms you see on the now famous copper box on that sideboard, complete with its curious legend, or motto. The Palkeneys have been there at Palkeney ever since Tudor times—in fact, since the earliest Tudor times. A wealthy race, I understand, but one of those which have gradually dwindled. And to come down to quite recent times, a few years ago, an old gentleman who was believed to be the very last of the Palkeneys, Mr. Matthew Palkeney, was living at Palkeney Manor. He was a very old man, nearly ninety. Once, in his early days, he had had a younger brother, John Palkeney, but he, as a young man, had taken his portion, a younger son’s portion, gone away from the ancestral home, and never been heard of again—the last that was heard of him was from South America, sixty or seventy years ago, when he was starting into hitherto unexplored country, where, it was believed, he lost his life. And so, in his old age, Matthew Palkeney, as last of his race, was very lonely. And one day he was stricken down in his last illness, and for some hours Sperrigoe, the doctor, the housekeeper, the nurse, all gathered about his death-bed, were considerably disturbed and puzzled by the old man’s repetition of certain words. They were the only words he murmured after being struck down, and he said them over and over again before he died. I will tell you what they were. These—The copper box—a Palkeney—a Palkeney—the copper box!”
He paused, with due appreciation of the dramatic effect, and looked at us. Madrasia gave a little shudder.
“Creepy!” she murmured.
“Very!” agreed Murthwaite. “Well, nobody knew what the old man meant, and it was useless to try to get him to give any explanation. But when he was dead, the old housekeeper, after much cudgelling of her brains, remembered that in a certain cabinet in a certain corner of the library there was a small box of beaten copper which she had seen Matthew Palkeney polish with his own hands in past years. She and Sperrigoe went to look for it; it was gone! Sperrigoe had the house searched from top to bottom for it; it was not in the house! That copper box had been stolen—and there it is, on Parslewe’s sideboard, here in Northumberland. That is—fact. Fact!”
He paused again, and we kept silence until it pleased him to go on.
“How did it get here?—or, rather, since nobody but Parslewe knows that, we can only deal with this—how did Sperrigoe find out that it was here? Mr. Craye has just told me one side of that, I can tell another. When Sperrigoe found that the copper box had been undoubtedly stolen, he had a thorough examination made of the contents of the library and checked by a printed catalogue kept there—for the library is famous. Then he found that several rare and valuable old books had disappeared with the copper box. Then he advertised. You know the rest. Parslewe had taken the copper box to Bickerdale; Bickerdale saw Sperrigoe’s advertisement—and so on. And now, when Pawley, as Sperrigoe’s advance agent, and then Sperrigoe himself, turn up to ask a direct question as to how he became possessed of the copper box, why does he run off?”
“Happening to know him,” said Madrasia quickly, “I can answer that. For good and honest reasons of his own!”
“As his friend and solicitor,” remarked Murthwaite, “I say Amen to that! But—why not have given some explanation?”
But it was time for me to step in there.