“And now, Pickering, before you go I want to show you something. It’s about this mysterious treasure, that has given you—and I hear, the whole countryside—so much concern. I’m disappointed in you, Jack, that you couldn’t find the hiding-place. I designed that as a part of your architectural education. Bates, give me a chair.”
The man gravely drew a chair out of the wreckage and placed it upon the hearth. My grandfather stepped upon it, seized one of the bronze sconces above the mantel and gave it a sharp turn. At the same moment, Bates, upon another chair, grasped the companion bronze and wrenched it sharply. Instantly some mechanism creaked in the great oak chimney-breast and the long oak panels swung open, disclosing a steel door with a combination knob.
“Gentlemen,”—and my grandfather turned with a quaint touch of humor, and a merry twinkle in his bright old eyes—“gentlemen, behold the treasury! It has proved a better hiding-place than I ever imagined it would. There’s not much here, Jack, but enough to keep you going for a while.”
We were all staring, and the old gentleman was unfeignedly enjoying our mystification. It was an hour on which he had evidently counted much; it was the triumph of his resurrection and home-coming, and he chuckled as he twirled the knob in the steel door. Then Bates stepped forward and helped him pull the door open, disclosing a narrow steel chest, upright and held in place by heavy bolts clamped in the stone of the chimney. It was filled with packets of papers placed on shelves, and tied neatly with tape.
“Jack,” said my grandfather, shaking his head, “you wouldn’t be an architect, and you’re not much of an engineer either, or you’d have seen that that paneling was heavier than was necessary. There’s two hundred thousand dollars in first-rate securities—I vouch for them! Bates and I put them there just before I went to Vermont to die.”
“I’ve sounded those panels a dozen times,” I protested.
“Of course you have,” said my grandfather, “but solid steel behind wood is safe. I tested it carefully before I left.”
He laughed and clapped his knees, and I laughed with him.
“But you found the Door of Bewilderment and Pickering’s notes, and that’s something.”
“No; I didn’t even find that. Donovan deserves the credit. But how did you ever come to build that tunnel, if you don’t mind telling me?”