"Certainly, my boy. We mustn"t leave a stone unturned."
"A rose unturned, you mean. Clair, what shall we ruthlessly tear it away with? I hate to take a chisel to this beautiful old door."
"Try a corkscrew," said Mabel.
"You mean a gimlet," said Bob. "That"s a good idea."
Fetching a gimlet, he bored a hole right in the centre of the carved blossom, but though it turned and creaked a little it wouldn"t come out.
"It must come," said Sinclair. "It turns, so that proves it"s meant to be movable. It probably has some hinge or spring that is rusted, and so it doesn"t work as it ought to. We"ll have to take hammer and chisel; shall we, Grandy?"
The boys were deferential to Mrs. Cromarty, for they well knew that she was tired of having the old house torn up to no avail. But surely this was an important development.
"Yes, indeed, boys. If your uncle"s words mean anything, they mean that it must be ruthlessly torn away, if removed at all."
For quite ten minutes the two boys worked away with their tools, endeavouring to mar the carving as little as might be, but resolved to succeed in their undertaking. At last the wooden rose fell out in their hands, leaving a round opening.
Peering in, Sinclair saw a small iron k.n.o.b, which seemed to be part of a rusty spring.
Greatly excited, he tried to push or turn it, but couldn"t move it.
"Anyway, we"re getting warm," he cried, and his glowing face corroborated his words.
The boys took turns in working at the stubborn spring, trying with forceps and pincers to move it, until at last something seemed to give way, and the whole front of the door jamb fell out as one panel.
Behind it was a series of small pigeon holes one above the other, all filled with neatly piled papers.
Though yellow with age, the papers were carefully folded, labelled, and dated.
"Patty!" cried Mabel, as she embraced her friend, "you"ve found our fortune for us!"
"Don"t be too sure," said Patty, laughing, and almost crying at the same time, so excited was she. "Your Uncle Marmaduke was of such uncertain ways I shouldn"t wonder if these were merely more files of his immortal verse."
"They"re bills," declared Sinclair, as he ran over a packet he took from a shelf.
"Let"s look them all over systematically," said Bob. "Let"s all sit round the table, and one of us read out what the paper is about. Then if we come to anything important, we"ll all know it at once."
This plan was adopted, and Sinclair, as the oldest, was chosen to read.
He sat at the head of the long library table, and the others were at either side.
But the packets of bills, though interesting in a general way, had no bearing on the great question of the fortune. The papers were all bills.
"Not even a bit of poetry," sighed Patty, as Sinclair laid aside one after another of the receipted bills for merchandise, household goods, clothing, and labour.
"These might interest a historian," said Sinclair, "as they throw some light on the prices of goods at that time. But we"ll keep on, we may come to something of interest yet."
"I hope so," said Bob. "I"m so anxious, that nothing less than a straight direction to the fortune would satisfy me."
"Well, here"s something," said Sinclair, "whatever it may mean."
The paper he had just unfolded was a mason"s bill, containing only one item. The bill was made out in due form, by one Martin Campbell, and was properly receipted as paid. And its single item read:
"To constructing one secret pocket.... Three Guineas."
"Oh!" cried Patty, breathless with excitement. "Then there is a secret pocket, or poke as your exasperating uncle calls it."
"There must be," said Sinclair; "and now that we know that, we"re going to find it. Of course, we a.s.sumed there was one, but we had only that foolish doggerel to prove it. Now this regular bill establishes it as a fact beyond all doubt. Do you know this Martin Campbell, Grandy?"
"I know there was a mason by that name, who worked here several times for your uncle. He came down from Leicester, but of course I know nothing more of him."
"We"ll find him!" declared Bob. "We"ll make him give up the secret of the pocket."
"Maybe he"s dead by this time," said Sinclair. "Was he an old man, Grandy?"
"I don"t know, my dear. I never saw him. He worked here when I was away in London. I fear, however, he is not alive now."
"Oh, perhaps he is. It was only about thirty-five years ago, or forty, that he built this "secret pocket." Thirty-eight, to be exact. The date on the bill proves that."
"Well, to-morrow you must go to see him," said Mrs. Hartley, rising. "But now, my children, you must go to bed. You can"t learn any more to-night, and to-morrow we will pick up the broken thread. Patty, my dear child, you are doing a great deal for us."
"It isn"t anything yet," said Patty, "but oh, if it only leads to something, I shall be so glad!"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE OLD CHIMNEY-PIECE
But Sinclair"s search for the old mason in Leicester was absolutely unsuccessful. He learned that Martin Campbell had died many years ago, and had left no direct descendants. A cousin of the old mason told Sinclair all this, and said, too, that there were no books or papers or accounts of the dead man left in existence.
So Sinclair returned home, disappointed but not entirely discouraged.
"We"ll find it yet," he said to Patty. "We have proof of a hiding-place, now we must discover it."
"We will!" declared Patty. "But it"s so exasperating not to know whether the old mason built that "pocket" indoors or out."
"Out, I think," said Sinclair. "It"s probably a sunken bin or vault of brick, made water-tight, and carefully concealed."
"Yes, it"s certainly carefully concealed," Patty agreed.
Sinclair was ent.i.tled to a fortnight"s vacation from his law studies, and he arranged to take it at this time. For now that the interest was revived, all were eager to make search all the time.
"Let"s be systematic about it," said Bob, "and divide the estate up into sections. Then let"s examine each section in turn."
This sounded well, but it was weary work. In the wooded land, especially, it was hopeless to look for any indicatory mark beneath the undergrowth of forty years. But each morning the four young people started out with renewed determination to keep at it, at any rate.