I took up the parchment, with its dangling seal, and noticed a dark smear across it. The old expert told me that the stain was a smear of blood.
“Then the secret is in the hands of some one named Knutton, and the right owner of two-thirds of the concealed property is a Wollerton?”
“Exactly.”
“Is there any accurate description of the treasure?”
“Yes. It is contained in an appendix in Bartholomew’s handwriting; a careful inventory of the numbers of ‘pieces of eight,’ the ornaments, bars of gold, and other objects of value. One gold cup alone is set down as weighing five hundred ounces.” And he turned over the leaves of vellum and showed me the inventory written there in Italian, a long list occupying nearly eighteen pages.
“The family of Knutton, knowing the secret, may have seized the treasure long ago,” I remarked.
“No, I think not,” was his reply. “In the document it is distinctly stated that a certain deed had been prepared and handed to Richard Knutton in order that it should be given to his eldest son and then descend in the family, and that so guarded was it in wording that it was impossible for any one to learn the place of concealment. Therefore, even if it still exists in the family of Knutton—which is an old Kentish name, by the way, as well as the name Dafte on the document, it would be impossible for the family to make any use of it.”
“Then where is the key plan of the place where the gold is hidden?” I queried.
“Ah, that, my dear sir, is a question I cannot answer,” he replied, shaking his head. “We may, however, hazard a surmise. We have gathered from Bartholomew’s own writings that he lived at a place called Caldecott, which would be about a hundred miles from Great Yarmouth, as the crow flies. Now, my theory is that he most probably transported the treasure by road to his own property as the most secure place for its concealment.”
“Most likely,” I cried, eagerly accepting his idea. “He would be much more prone to place it in his own house or bury it on his own lands than on property belonging to some one else.”