‘Yes. He was that artful there was no being up to him. We used to keep old china in that chest—Battersea and Chelsea and Worcester and Derby—valuable little bits of the English school, which fetch higher prices than anything foreign nowadays. All of a sudden, soon after he came to be partner with his father—for the old man doated upon him, and would have made any sacrifice to please him—I found out that the specimens in the muniment chest were dwindling somehow. One day I missed a cup and saucer, and another day a soup-basin and cover, and so on. At first I thought I must be mistaken—my own catalogue was wrong, perhaps—but by and by I saw the things visibly melting, as you may say, and I told my master. He told Mr. Ferdinand about it; but bless your heart, Mr. Ferdinand brings out the day-book with the sale of those very goods entered as neatly as possible, some under one date, and some under another. “I never remember taking the money for those things, Ferdinand,” said my master; but Mr. Ferdinand stood him out that he’d had the money all correct, and master believed him, or pretended to believe him, I hardly know which. And so things went on. Sometimes it was in small things, sometimes in large; but in every way that a son could plunder his father, Ferdinand Sivewright plundered my master. It was quite by accident I found out about his having the duplicate key. He came to the desk where I was writing one day and asked me to give him change for a sovereign, and in taking the money out of his waistcoat-pocket in his quick impatient way he tumbles out a lot of other things—a pencil-case, a penknife, and a key. I knew that key at a glance; it’s a peculiar-looking one, as you see. “That’s a curious little key, Mr. Ferdinand,” said I, picking it up and looking at it before he could stop me. “Yes,” he said, taking it out of my hand before I’d had time to examine it very closely, and putting it back in his pocket, “it’s a key that belonged to my poor mother’s jewel-case. No use to me; but I keep it for her sake.” Well, sir, I told Mr. Sivewright about that key, but he only sighed in that downhearted way which was common enough with him in those days. He didn’t seem surprised, and indeed I think he’d come to know his son’s ways pretty well by this time. “Say nothing about it, Wincher,” he said to me, “you may be mistaken after all. In any case you needn’t keep anything valuable in the chest in future. If my only son is a thief, we won’t put temptation in his way.”’ ‘Hard upon the father,’ said Lucius. ‘But this throws no light upon the disappearance of those things. What do you consider their value?’ ‘As old silver the plate may be worth about forty pounds, as specimens of art at least three hundred. The monstrance is worth much more.’ ‘Humph, and I suppose a thief would be likely to sell them immediately as old silver.’