"'Frankly I would take what wealth I have with me if I could.'" And Quarles repeated the sentence twice. "That might imply that there was no wealth to speak of; and, following this idea for a moment, the permission to burn the house or pull it down might suggest a hope in the old man's mind that the frantic search for what did not exist would result in the destruction of even that which did--the house and furniture. The fact that he desires ten per cent. of the wealth, if it is found, to go to imbeciles rather favors this notion; and his wish to be cremated may be an attempt to make his relatives spend money upon him from whom they were destined to receive nothing." "It would be a grim joke," I said. "A madman's humor, perhaps," said Zena. "He goes on: 'This being impossible, I suppose,' and then says he has hidden his wealth. He did not seem quite certain that he could not take it with him, did he?" "You think----" "No, no," said Quarles, "I haven't got as far as thinking anything definite yet. The will then explains in a riddle where the treasure is hidden. He was alone in a room. He didn't send the treasure out of the house. The statements are so deliberate that I am inclined to believe in a treasure of some sort." "So am I," I answered, "because of the valuable pin he gave to his man." "When was this will made?" asked Quarles. "Nine years ago." "Living as he did, he would hardly spend his pension," the professor went on. "Money would accumulate in nine years, and, since there is no evidence that he did anything else with it, we may assume that the hoard was periodically added to, and, therefore, he must have placed it where he could get at it without much difficulty." For a moment Quarles studied the paper. "I think we may take his statements literally," he went on; "so unless the treasure was very small, small enough to be concealed inside a brick, it seems obvious that it was not hidden in the walls of the house, or it would have been found in the process of pulling down." "If we are to be quite literal, we must remember that he says brick by brick," I pointed out. "It might therefore be hidden in a brick." "I have thought of that," Quarles returned; "but in pulling down bricks would get broken, especially a hollow brick, as this would be. I think we may take the words to mean only total demolition, and that there is no special significance in the expression 'brick by brick.' Burning does away with the idea that the treasure may be hidden in woodwork." "If he put it under a ground floor room or under a cellar neither pulling down nor a fire would disclose it," said Zena. "Every flag in the cellars has been taken up," I answered; "and all the ground underneath the house has been dug up." "Is there a well?" she asked. "No; that was the first thing I looked for when I came there." "He says in a room," Quarles went on. "I don't think that means a cellar."