“You don’t mean to say it’s the Louvre picture, La Something or other, the woman with the smile, that disappeared about two years ago?” exclaimed the aunt with rising excitement.
“Oh no, not that,” said Vera, “but something quite as important and just as mysterious—if anything, rather more scandalous.”
“Not the Dublin—?”
Vera nodded.
“The whole jolly lot of them.”
“In Betsy’s cottage? Incredible!”
“Of course Betsy hasn’t an idea as to what they are,” said Vera; “she just knows that they are something valuable and that she must keep quiet about them. I found out quite by accident what they were and how they came to be there. You see, the people who had them were at their wits’ end to know where to stow them away for safe keeping, and some one who was motoring through the village was struck by the snug loneliness of the cottage and thought it would be just the thing. Mrs. Lamper arranged the matter with Betsy and smuggled the things in.”
“Mrs. Lamper?”
“Yes; she does a lot of district visiting, you know.”
“I am quite aware that she takes soup and flannel and improving literature to the poorer cottagers,” said Mrs. Bebberly Cumble, “but that is hardly the same sort of thing as disposing of stolen goods, and she must have known something about their history; anyone who reads the papers, even casually, must have been aware of the theft, and I should think the things were not hard to recognise. Mrs. Lamper has always had the reputation of being a very conscientious woman.”