“Speaks English?” I cried, surprised. “Why, in Leghorn he always feigned ignorance of any single word of English.”
“For his own purposes, no doubt,” laughed my friend. “Ten minutes ago I overheard him talking English with his lordship quite fluently. It seems as though this old Italian has a plan,—a tracing, no doubt,—and from it they are locating the whereabouts of the treasure. They have a measuring-tape with them, and have taken a lot of measurements, all from the southern buttress of the central tower. Their measurements, however, extended much farther than ours, indeed right away into the field beyond the one where are the remains of the fish ponds. You recollect where a footpath crosses, which, it appears, leads to a place called Anchor Church House, whatever that may be. Well, they measured, took angles by the buttress of the tower, and here and there stuck into the grass little pieces of whitewashed wood like labels gardeners use. They’ve evidently been marking out the ground in a long oblong patch, and both were exceedingly careful that their measurements should tally exactly with what was given upon the plan. Lord Glenelg went about sounding various spots by tapping the earth with his cane. The latter I discovered was a bar of iron painted dark-brown, and hooked to represent a walking stick—a clever contrivance to escape attention. He evidently expected to find some hollow spot.”
“But that is not borne out by the record left by old Godfrey, is it? Why should they expect to discover a hollow?”
“Ah! that’s a mystery,” he responded. “I merely tell you what I’ve just seen—namely, that they have some plan from which they are working in a slow, scientific, and methodical manner, not in our field, but in the one beyond, in what I’ve ascertained is called the Great Postland. They have a compass with them, and have taken proper bearings.”
“Well, they’ll have to get the permission of the owner of the land before they can dig, that’s certain. I wonder to whom it belongs?”
“To the Church, no doubt. If we warn our friend, the rector, we’ll no doubt be able to stop their little game, at least for the present,” remarked Walter. “Unless, of course, the magic of an earl’s name carries more weight than ours. Recollect that Lord Glenelg is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a well-known archaeologist.”
“But why is he investigating a spot that is not mentioned in The Closed Book?” I queried. “This seems to me an independent search altogether.”
“Perhaps; but it is directed towards the same end—namely, the discovery of the abbey treasure. Yet, where the hunchback obtained his plan is certainly a mystery. They marked out an oblong on the grass about twenty feet long by ten feet, and then gauged the center of it. At the exact spot the old Italian placed a piece of newspaper under a big flint which he found on the footpath, and then took up the whitened pieces of wood with which he marked the ground.”
“And then?”
“They went back to the inn together, and as soon as they were out of sight I cut down a big bunch of nettles at the spot with my stick, and then moved the stone and bit of newspaper about fifty feet westward.” He laughed.