“I have called to ask you a favour,” I said, “My mother was born in this house, and being in the neighbourhood I am most anxious to see the old place. Have you any objection?”
“Oh, no, sir,” was the kindly woman’s prompt response. “Come in; you’re very welcome to look round, I’m sure. No, keep your hat on, there are so many draughts.”
“Is it draughty, then?”
“Oh, sir,” she said, shaking her head and sighing; “I don’t know what the place used to be in days gone by, but me and my husband are truly sorry we ever took it. In winter it’s a reg’ler ice-well. We can’t keep ourselves warm anyhow. It’s so lonely, and full of strange noises o’ nights. I’m not nervous, but all the same they’re not nice.”
“Rats, perhaps.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” And she led me along the narrow passage where the stones were worn hollow by the tread of generations, and ushered me into a small, low room where black beams ran across the ceiling. But, oh! the incongruity of that interior. Over the old panelling was pasted common wall-paper of hideous design in green and yellow, while the furniture was of modern description, quite out of keeping with the antiquity of the house. As she led me through room after room I noticed how successive tenants had, by papering and white-washing, endeavoured to turn the place into a kind of modern cottage home. Much of the old woodwork had been removed, and even the oaken doors were actually painted and grained! The staircase was still, however, in its original state of dark oak, and handsomely carved, and the stone balustrade which ran round the landing was a splendid example of Elizabethan construction. Half the rooms were unfurnished, but the good woman took me along the echoing, carpetless corridors and showed me the various chambers above as well as below.
Could that ruinous place be the one which the noble adventurer had chosen for the concealment of the loot?
The place certainly coincided in date with the written statement, but I had nothing to connect it with the name of da Schorno. Perhaps, however, some of the title-deeds connected with the place might tell me something, so I obtained from Mrs. Kenway the name and address of the landlord, a man named Cohen, living in Dublin.
“This isn’t at all the house me and my husband wanted,” she declared. “Our idea when we took it was to take paying guests, because I’m used to lodgers. I let apartments for six years in Hunstanton, and our idea in coming here was to take paying guests, as they call ’em nowadays. We advertised in the London papers and got two ladies, but they only stayed a fortnight. It was too quiet for them, they said. Since then several people have been, but I haven’t let once.”
I was certainly not surprised. If I were paying guest in that house I should go melancholy mad within a week. Besides, as far as I could see, the place was comfortless. An appearance of freshness was lent it by the new paper in execrable taste in the hall, and a gaudy new linoleum upon the beautiful old polished stairs, but beyond that the interior was just as dingy and cold-looking as the outside.