“Not if it is claimed by its rightful owner—the youngest child of the Wollertons.”
“You don’t believe that this book contains the secret of the hiding-place after all?” I suggested.
“No. Unless my theory is correct that it was transferred from Yarmouth to Caldecott. Why should he have sailed in the teeth of that great gale from the Cornish coast right round to Yarmouth if he had not some object in so doing?”
“Well,” I said, “it forms a curious story in any case.”
“Very curious. This old Italian seems to have been an adventurer as well as a noble, judging from his own statements. The Turkish ships he seized in the Mediterranean he sold and pocketed the money, and more than once in the capture of the Corsair strongholds a big share of valuable loot fell to him. So it was not altogether from motives of humanity that he had become a Knight of St. Stephen, but rather from a love of profitable adventure.”
I recollected how I had stood beside a skeleton that was undoubtedly his, a man of unusual stature still wearing a portion of finely inlaid Italian armour such as I had seen in museums.
“He must have been a wealthy man,” I remarked.
“Undoubtedly. And, furthermore, if we discover the spot where the treasure is hidden, we may also discover the loot that he most probably secured and brought to England for concealment.”
“Is anything stated regarding his family?”
“He had one son, but his wife died of the plague in Italy two years after her marriage. The son he names as Robert, but no doubt he was not on good terms with him, otherwise he would have left the secret to him, and the treasure as an inheritance.”