"We started, the three of us, that very afternoon, as excited as a party of schoolboys. Miles and I kept questioning Devereux, but he had really no more to tell. He had never thought of examining the walls of the haunted room--it was wainscotted, he said--and might be lined all through with secret cupboards, for all he knew. But he could not get over the extraordinariness of the ghost's sticking to the _tapestry_--and indeed it does rather lower one's idea of ghostly intelligence. "We went at it at once--the tower was not _bricked_ up again, luckily--we got in without difficulty the next morning--Devereux making some excuse to the servants, a new set who had not heard of the ghost, for our eccentric proceedings. It was a tiresome business. There were so many panels in the room, as Hunter had said, and it was impossible to tell in which _the_ tapestry had been fixed. But we had our measures, and we carefully marked a line as near as we could guess at the height from the floor that the cut in the _portières_ must have been. Then we tapped and pummelled and pressed imaginary springs till we were nearly sick of it--there was nothing to guide us. The wainscotting was dark and much shrunk and marked with age, and full of joins in the wood any one of which might have meant a door. "It was Devereux himself who found it at last. We heard an exclamation from where he was standing by himself at the other side of the room. He was quite white and shaky. "'Look here,' he said, and we looked. "Yes--there was a small deep recess, or cupboard in the thickness of the wall, excellently contrived. Devereux had touched the spring at last, and the door, just matching the cut in the tapestry, flew open. "Inside lay what at first we took for a packet of letters, and I hoped to myself they contained nothing that would bring trouble on poor Devereux. They were not letters, however, but two or three incomplete packs of cards--grey and dust-thick with age--and as Miles spread them out, certain markings on them told their own tale. Devereux did not like it, naturally--their supposed owner had been a member of his house. "'The ghost has kept a conscience,' he said, with an attempt at a laugh. 'Is there nothing more?' "Yes--a small leather bag--black and grimy, though originally, I fancy, of chamois skin. It drew with strings. Devereux pulled it open, and felt inside. "'By George!' he exclaimed. And he held out the most magnificent diamond ring I have ever seen--sparkling away as if it had only just come from the polisher's. 'This must be _the_ ring,' he said. "And we all stared--too astonished to speak.