Page 45 of The Trick of the Treasure
Christine Lloyd wassure she had done the wrong thing admitting strangers to the strong room. She’d known it as soon as she walked into her husband’s bedchamber. On the other hand, since he had made it clear that the entire household should co-operate with Mrs. Silver and Mr. Grey, she didn’t see what else she could do. For a few moments, she hoped she might be saved by the fact that no one except Barnabas and Sydney knew how to open the door. But she was wrong in that too.
Squashed into the strong room with them, she could almost feel her sense of superiority slipping away. She looked from one to the other.
“What does it mean?” she asked. “Whose initials do you expect to see on a chest dug out of an island swamp?”
Mrs. Silver rose to her graceful feet.
Mr. Grey said, “In your husband’s photograph, taken on the island, the initials are clear. And they are just as clearly absent fromthischest.”
“Someone rubbed them off?” she hazarded. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I can think of no reason,” Mr. Grey said. “I think this is a different chest.”
“But…how can that be?” She frowned with incomprehension, floundering. With relief, she heard Sydney whistling casually as he sauntered downstairs from his own room.
When he saw them, he staggered back theatrically. “Aha! The burglars are it again! I shall send for a policeman forthwith. Stop, thief!”
“Oh, be quiet, Sydney,” Christine said, not quite able to laugh. “Mr. Grey believes this to be a different chest.”
“Different from what?” Sydney asked, apparently as mystified as she, although his mother doubted that he was.
“Look at the chest,” Mrs. Silver invited him. “Is this truly the one you dug up on the island?”
“Of course it is.” Sydney glanced in some amusement from her to Mr. Grey. “What on earth makes you think it isn’t?”
Mrs. Silver explained about the initials in the photograph and Sydney scratched his head.
“Well, that’s odd,” he admitted, squeezing inside the room in place of Christine and inspecting the place on the chest where the initials were, apparently, meant to be carved. He glanced up again. “I don’t recall any initials. I just recall a dirty old chest full of sparkly things. Could the chest have been rubbed so hard in cleaning it that layers of the wood came off and obliterated the carving?”
“I don’t see how. We believe the original chest never left the ship.”
Sydney’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you, by God?” He met Christine’s gaze and laughed. “Lord, no wonder the old devil wouldn’t open the chest for you and the girls!”
“Sydney!” Christine exclaimed. “What on earth do you mean? That your father put the treasure somewhere else? They why employ Mrs. Silver and Mr. Grey to find it?”
Sydney shrugged. “Because he never thought they would? I don’t know how his mind works. Perhaps he thought it was a safety measure. Or something.” He frowned down at the chest. “But are you absolutely sure about this? It looks like the same chest, right down to the grubby old wood. You can even see where it was cleaned.”
Mr. Grey moved, bending to rub his fingers over the wood, inhaling, almost like a sniffing dog.
Sydney’s dancing eyes met Christine’s.
“Salt,” Grey said. “I can smell the sea and must off this chest. The wood has been damp, but…”
“The nails are old too,” Sydney said, rubbing at one or two. “And dirty. How can they be exactly the same, apart from the damned initials—sorry, Mama, Mrs. Silver.”
“Because someone went to a lot of trouble to copy the shape and materials of the first,” Mr. Grey said. “Who would have had opportunity to do that? Or the skills?”
“No one,” Sydney said. “The treasure stayed with my father in his cabin. But I suppose we had all seen it. I still don’t understand how anyone could have swapped the chests, though. I saw Papa open it for customs before we left the ship, and the treasure was definitely in it at the time. Good Lord, do you mean the treasurestayedon the ship for anyone to steal, while we brought back an empty chest?”
He scowled. “Wait, though, itwasn’tempty. Harry and I had to heave it up here from the drawing room, and I can assure you it weighed a great deal! None of this makes any sense.”
Mr. Grey kicked at the little pile of rubbish that Barnabas had raked out of the trunk on opening it for Rachel the morning after he had come home with it. Could that have been what Harry and John had carried into the house inside the chest? What Harry and Sydney had carried up here before dinner?
Unease tugged at her chest. Something more complicated than simple theft was going on here, and her mischievous son was a little too amused…
“Sense?” Mr. Grey said calmly. “No, not yet. I suggest we repair to theQueen of the Seaas soon as possible.”
“You truly believe the treasure is still there?” Christine asked in astonishment.
