But the ball was not to be found.
We resumed the match. I served doubles.
“Don’t lose your nerve,” called Lib. “I’ve mortgaged my—say, folks, there’s a rumpus up at the House. Jiminy, I’ll bet something’s happened!”
Miss Lebetwood and I looked at each other.
“What is it, Libkins?” she asked sharply. “What do you see?”
“Slews of people—millions of ’em—running around the House. Say, there’s Doctor Aire going like a pump-handle. Say, I’m going to see what this is.”
I looked at Miss Lebetwood, and we broke into a run, following Lib.
Although we arrived almost the last of the crowd, Finlay, the venerable gardener, was still positively drooling with excitement. To him the credit must go for having inadvertently put a term to more than one of our galling problems.
Crofts rather fancies carrying on old Watts’ custom of experiment with unusual trees and shrubs. For the sake of their jewel-like red berries, he had a couple of Guelder Rose plants, almost full-grown, ready to be put in the soil, when Cosgrove’s death set all things awry. To-day they could not be kept out of the ground any longer. One of the small trees was to be placed at the turn of the drive around the front of the House, about fifty feet from the library tower.
At the appointed site Finlay had merrily tossed up the soil from a considerable cavity while Miss Lebetwood and I played our game. There had come a jab of the spade which appeared to make the earth settle somewhat. Again the gardener pressed the spade with his heel; the earth seemed to give way. Alarmed, for he knew that there were no drains passing beneath this lawn, Finlay got out of the pit he had digged, reached down and poked experimentally with his tool. Of a sudden, the bottom of the hole sank something like a yard, and a chunk of antique subterranean masonry, broken off, was revealed, with sluggish black water visible through the gap. But something else was showing there, too, besides the mass of soil which had fallen through the collapsed roof of the waterway: