"I suppose you haven't come across anything concerning a Papal Bull?" he inquired.
"No," said Mark, looking up in surprise. "It's not very likely I should, you know."
"No, I suppose not," said Gimblet. "Still, you old families did get hold of all sorts of odd things sometimes, and your uncle was a bit of a collector, wasn't he?"
"Uncle Douglas," said Mark, "not he! He didn't care a bit for that kind of thing. You can see in the drawing-room the sort of horrors he used to buy. He was thoroughly early Victorian in his tastes, and ought to have been born fifty years sooner than he was."
"Dear me," said Gimblet. "I don't know why I thought he was rather by way of being a connoisseur. Well, well, I mustn't waste any more time. I wanted to ask you if you would mind my going all over the house. I may see something suggestive. Who knows? At present I have only examined the library and your uncle's bedroom."
"By all means," said Mark. "Blanston will show you anything you want to see. Oh, by the by, you like to be alone, don't you? I was forgetting. Well, go anywhere you like; and good luck to your hunting!"
On a writing-table in one of the bedrooms, Gimblet found a paper-weight in the bronze shape of a Spanish toro, head down, tail brandishing, a fine emblem of goaded rage. But there was nothing promising about the round mahogany table on which it stood: no drawer, secret or otherwise could all his measurings and tappings discover; the animal, when lifted up by the horn and dangled before the detective's critical eye, proclaimed itself modern and of no artistic merit. It was like a hundred others to be had in any Spanish town, and by no expanding of terms could it be considered a curiosity.
Except for this one more than doubtful find, he drew the whole house absolutely blank. There were very few specimens of ancient work in the castle, which like so many other old houses had been stripped of everything interesting it contained in the middle of the nineteenth century, and entirely refurnished and redecorated in the worst possible taste. With the exception of some family portraits, the lacquered clock in the library was the one genuine survival of the Victorian holocaust, and though Gimblet passed nearly half an hour in contemplating it he could not see any way of connecting it with a bull, nor was he a whit the wiser when he finally turned his back on it than he had been at the beginning.
CHAPTER XV
Blanston, to whom he appealed, could give no useful information. Yes, some of the plate was old, but that was all at the bank in London. Mrs. Haviland, his lordship's sister, had liked it on the table when his lordship entertained in his London house, and it had not been carried backwards and forwards to Scotland since her ladyship's death.