"Here, here! let's get the poker; we'll try gentle persuasion."
Jack, forcing the point of the poker into the cavity, leant his weight upon the handle. There was a creaking sound--and nothing else.
"George! it's stiff! I'm putting on a pressure of about ten tons."
As he paused, preparatory to exerting greater force, Madge, brushing him aside, caught the poker from him. She drove the point against the wainscot with all her strength--once, twice, thrice. The wood was shivered into fragments.
"There! I think that's done the business."
So far as destroying the panel was concerned, it certainly had. Only splinters remained. The wall behind was left almost entirely bare. They pressed forward to see what the act of vandalism had disclosed.
Between the wainscot and the party-wall there was a space of two or three inches. Among the cobwebs and the dust there was plainly something--something which was itself so encrusted with a coating of dust as to make it difficult, without closer inspection, to tell plainly what it was.
Ella prevented Jack from making a grab at it.
"Let Madge take it--it's hers--she's the finder."
Madge, snatching at it with eager fingers, withdrew the something from its hiding-place.