“You don’t know Dick,” he said simply. “Dick, of course, is the Black Abbot. I only found it out a week or two ago, when I went into his room and discovered the costume in a box. He had forgotten to put it away.” She did not believe the only truth he had told her so far but she felt that it would be undiplomatic, to say the least, to argue with him. “Harry, I can’t stay here, you know,” she said. “There is only one room, and I have a weakness for a daily bath----” He walked across the room and pulled aside a sacking that hid one corner, and pointed dramatically. “You will find everything you require here,” he said. “This room is yours. I shall sleep upstairs, only coming below at the first hint of danger, either to you or to me. The position calls for courage and patience, and I know that my wife-to-be has those qualities to excess.” He was his old, smiling, genial self. “By-the-way, there are plenty of books to read--I brought some away from the house. They were rather heavy and I had to drag them a little bit, but thank heaven I got just what I wanted.” She noticed them now for the first time, piled at one end of the refectory table. He took up a volume and turned the leaves lovingly. “You do not read German? I think you told me that before. It is a pity, because this is a very fascinating narrative, told by an outsider of the Chelfords of the period. You will be pleased to learn that I have located the treasure. It was not difficult. I knew all the time that it was behind the second door in the room above.” “Have you known this place for long?” He nodded. “For six years,” he said. “I found it on the twenty-first anniversary of my dear mother’s death. I think I ought to say ‘murder,’ for there is no doubt that my father, who had all the worst qualities of Dick, killed her--hanged her.” Her face contorted with horror. “In that room?” she said, in a strained voice. “Behind the door?” He nodded. “The thing was hushed up. My clever father was too great a man to be put on trial for his life and the story was circulated that she had died by her own hand.” Every word he said was a lie, as she knew, but he believed it. He explained quite rationally how the light was worked; showed her the little wash place with the stream of water running from the raw rock through a cavity into some invisible deeps; even gave her a short résumé of the history of the place. It had been built by the Black Abbot himself for his own especial purpose. “My first idea was that there was another exit here, or rather an entrance for those peculiar friends of his, but that I have failed to discover.” He took up one of the rifles, shot back the bolt with the air of an expert, and, going up the steps, unfastened the heavy oaken bar that kept the stone in place.