"Mr. Batterley's just called with a suggestion, my lord," observed Polke, good-humouredly. "He's heard of Mr. Horbury's disappearance, and of the loss of your lordship's jewels, and he says that an explanation of the whole thing may be got if we search the bank-house." "Thoroughly!" said Batterley, with a warning shake of his big head. "Thoroughly--thoroughly, Mr. Polke! No use just walking through the rooms, and seeing what any housemaid would see--the thing must be done properly. Your lordship," he continued, turning to the Earl, "knows that many houses in our Market-Place possess secret passages, double-staircases, and the like--Horbury's house is certainly one of those that do. It has, of course, been modernized. My memory is not quite as good as it was, but I have a recollection that when I was a boy, well over seventy years ago--I am, as your lordship is aware, nearer ninety than eighty--there were hiding-places discovered in the bank-house at the time Matthew Chestermarke, grandfather of the present Gabriel, had it altered: in fact, I am quite sure I was taken by my father to see them. Now, of course, many of these places were bricked up, and so on, but I think--it is my impression--that a double staircase was left untouched, and some recesses in the panelling of the garden-room. That garden-room, Mr. Polke--if you know what I mean?" "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.