“Yes, but I did not hide! And he did, and hid from me, too, and lied about it. How long he had been watching you, I cannot say, but if you think that you can break through all your habits, sir, and be missing for two hours at night and a man as shrewd as Toft suspect nothing, you are mistaken. Of course he wonders. The next time he thinks it over. The third time he follows you. Presently whatever you know he will know.”
“Confound him!” Audley turned to the table and jerked some brandy into a glass. Then, “You haven’t asked yet,” he said, “what I’ve done.”
“If I am to choose,” Basset replied, “I would rather not know. You know my views.”
“I know that you didn’t think I should do it? Well, I’ve done it!”
“Do you mean that—you’ve found the evidence?”
“Is it likely?” the other replied petulantly. “No, but I’ve been in the Muniment Room. It is fifty years since I heard my father describe its position, but I could have gone to it blindfold! I was a boy then, and the name—he was telling a story of the old lord—took my fancy. I listened. In time the thing faded, but one day when I was at the lawyer’s and some one mentioned the Muniment Room, the story came back to me so clearly, that I could almost repeat my father’s words.”
“And you’ve been in the room?”
“I’ve been in it. Why not? A door two inches thick and studded with iron, and a lock that one out of any dozen big keys would open!” He rubbed his calves in his satisfaction. “In twenty minutes I was inside.”
“And it was empty?”
“It was empty,” the other agreed, with a cunning smile. “As bare as a board. A little whitewashed room, just as my father described it!”