“Nothing much, I should think,” said I.
“No; but I’ve heard of very important and fateful things going into small compass,” he remarked. “Anyway, there it is! You can’t get away from the measurements. There’s a space—there! And there’ll be some trick of opening the thing from the bottom—probably connected with these feet.”
He pointed to the four circular knobs on which the copper box rested, but made no attempt to touch them; his thoughts seemed to be otherwhere. And after thinking a little, he suddenly turned to me confidentially.
“I told you I’d tell you something,” he said. “You’re a dependable chap, Craye—I showed that by leaving the girl in your charge. She likes you, too, and I suppose you two young people will fall in love with each other if you haven’t done so already, and if you have, my lad—all right! You’ll make a big name in your art—but never mind that; I’ll tell you a bit about this box. Not how it came into my possession; the time for that is not yet. But when I did get it it was locked, and I had no key to it, and never bothered to get one found or made. When it got a wee bit damaged, I took it to Bickerdale, here in this town, and asked him to put it right. He was a bit wary of dealing with it, but said he knew a man who would, so I left it with him, and, incidentally, asked him, while they were about it, to have it unlocked. And now, Craye, now I think that while it was in Bickerdale’s hands, or in the other man’s hands, something was abstracted from that box—something that I never knew was in it. Abstracted then—unless——”
He paused, making a queer, speculating grimace.
“Unless—what?” I asked.
He leaned nearer to my shoulder, dropping his voice, though there was no one at all near us.
“Unless it was abstracted at Kelpieshaw yesterday, by that chap Weech!” he replied. “Weech? Augustus? What a name!”
“Weech!” I exclaimed. “By him! Impossible!”
“And why impossible, my lad?” he asked. “No impossibility about it! Didn’t you tell me just now, upstairs, while you were giving your account of all that had transpired, that you and Madrasia went up to my library to compare the titles of the books in The Times advertisement with certain volumes on my shelves, leaving Master Augustus Weech alone—with the copper box in front of him? Of course!”