The discrepancy in the distance puzzled us. Was it possible that the celebrated silver altar of Crowland and the three chestfuls of treasure lay buried in the centre of the slime of that half-dried pond?
Surely the lake must have been of much larger dimensions in Godfrey’s day; and, if it were, then the distance between its edge and the grand altar would not be so great.
I produced the tracing of the mysterious plan contained in The Closed Book, but failed to comprehend it in any detail. The shaky lines, intended to be straight, were mostly numbered, as though denoting paces distant. But there was no number 131, or 109, as I had found it, hence we were utterly mystified, and both inclined to believe that in imagining the plan to concern Crowland we had been mistaken.
We both stood at the edge of the muddy pond and glanced into its green, stagnant water.
Was it possible that the great treasures of that half-demolished abbey, whose high ruined walls and buttresses cast their shadows behind, had been hidden deep in the mud below by the same hand that had written The Closed Book, the hand that had envenomed its pages and thus preserved the great secret from age to age?
It seemed almost incredible in these matter-of-fact times, and yet we both felt confident that the treasure enumerated in that list lay cunningly concealed somewhere in that vicinity.