It was a common lock, and easily forced. As I threw back the lid, Sir Frederick held up the lantern. ‘Take them out, Blake, and see if they are all there; it will be a wonderful thing if none are missing.—What on earth is that?’
‘It looks to me like a dog-collar,’ I answered, as I shook out a black Cashmere shawl in which was wrapped a silver curb chain with a small silver bell attached to it.
‘Stolen from somebody else,’ cried Sir Frederick. ‘Get on with the rest.’
‘This beats everything,’ said I, and drew forth a small pale-blue garment fashioned like a horse’s body-cloth, with a monogram in gold thread at one side. ‘It is a dog’s coat.—And what the deuce is this?’
‘A dog!’ we exclaimed simultaneously.
Carefully folded in a piece of soft linen lay the body of a small silky white, long-haired terrier—to judge by all its surroundings, a lady’s cherished pet. For a few seconds, disgust and disappointment kept us silent; then Sir Frederick broke out into a series of execrations more amusing than effective.
We had been befooled by our own enthusiasm as amateur detectives, and at first were angry, but by-and-by came to see the situation in its more grotesque aspect. After giving vent to our feelings in a burst of suppressed laughter, we put the little pet back into his play-box coffin, being careful to see that everything was just as we had found it; and quickly shovelling the mould and pushing the tombstone over it, we crept out of the old cemetery. Our feelings were very different from those with which we had entered it. We were greatly cheered, however, on reaching the hotel to find a line from Aigunez, which had come during Sir Frederick’s absence; ‘I am on the right track.’
We heard no more for two days, when the detective reappeared with a captive, a valet whom Sir Frederick had dismissed before leaving England, who, knowing the great value of the jewels which Lady O’Connor was taking with her, had thought it worth his while to follow them, and being a clever hand at that sort of work, had succeeded as we have seen.