“No. I wish it did.”
“Have you ever seen it before?”
“Never, to my knowledge.”
“What about the pencil-case?”
I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers. “No,” I said; “it is not mine and I have no recollection of ever having seen it before.”
“And the button?”
“It is apparently a waistcoat button,” I said after having inspected it, “apparently belonging to a tweed waistcoat; and judging by the appearance of the thread and the wisp of cloth that it still holds, it must have been pulled off with some violence. But it isn’t off my waist-coat, if that is what you want to know.”
“I didn’t much think it was,” he replied, “but I thought it best to make sure. And it didn’t come from poor Mr. D’Arblay’s waistcoat, because I have examined that and there is no button missing. I showed these things to Miss D’Arblay, and she is sure that none of them belonged to her father. He never used a pencil-case—artists don’t, as a rule—and as to the guinea, she knew nothing about it. If it was her father’s, he must have come by it immediately before his death; otherwise she felt sure he would have shown it to her, seeing that they were both interested in anything in the nature of sculpture.”
“Where did you get these things?” I asked.
“From the pond in the wood,” he replied. “I will tell you how I came to find them—that is, if I am not taking up too much of your time.”