"Mr. Batterley," remarked the Earl, "means the panelled room which looks out on the garden. Mr. Horbury has used it as a study."
"The garden-room," continued the old antiquary, "should be particularly examined. It is into that room that the double staircase opens—by a door concealed in the recess at the side of the fire-place. There were, I am sure, recesses behind the panelling in that room. Now, Horbury may have known of them—he had tastes of an antiquarian disposition—in an amateur way, you know. At any rate, Mr. Polke, you should examine the house—and especially that room, for Horbury may have hidden Lord Ellersdeane's property there. A deeply interesting room that!" added the old man musingly. "I haven't been in it for some sixty years or so, but I remember it quite well. It was in that room that Jasper Chestermarke murdered Sir Gervase Rudd."
Starmidge, who, like the rest of them, had been listening eagerly to Batterley's talk, turned sharply to him.
"Did you say murdered, sir?" he said.
"A well-known story!" answered the old man half-impatiently, as he rose from his chair. "An ancestor of these Chestermarkes—he killed a man in that very room. Well—that's what I suggest, Mr. Polke. And—for another reason. As Lord Ellersdeane there knows—being, as his lordship is, a member of our society—the bank-house is so old that underneath it there may be such matters as old wells, old drains. Now, supposing Horbury had discovered some way under the present house, some secret passage or some-
