Harry made his appearance at an hour not unusually late, with a perfectly normal face and manner; no sound of last night's excursions had reached him. They talked in their usual desultory fashion, but Geoffrey's mind was preoccupied with the yet unsolved problem. He felt certain that Mr. Francis had some secret way in and out of the house, and it should be the next piece of business to discover what that was. Had he come in by some back door, or through an unbolted window, he would have told him so last night; but he had said he came through the front door, a thing impossible. But the subject of a secret door was easy to approach.
"I'm working all the morning, Geoff," said Harry; "what will you do with yourself? Poke and potter with a gun, if you like. We'll ride this afternoon."
"I'll poke and potter," said he, "but without a gun, I think. I feel yew-hedgy this morning."
"I thought you did," said Harry cordially, "but I have no idea what you mean."
"That is just a little slow of you," said Geoffrey. "It means that I shall look behind tapestry and tap panelling, and find a secret staircase."
"Do. I'll give you a shilling for every secret stair you find."
"Done. Anything extra for a secret door?"
"Door is two," said Harry; "concealed will be ten, skeleton fifteen; Other objects will be valued by arbitration. Baron von Vail has kindly consented to be arbitrator," he added, in a burst of futility.
"Fifteen is a little too low for a skeleton," said Geoffrey. "It would fetch more than that at a medical shop."
"Well, twenty, if you like, but you don't raise me again. Well, I'm off."
"Smoking room. If you want to do any panel-knocking there, come and do it at once. What a baby you are!"
"The search is going to be exhaustive," he said. "I'll begin with the smoking room."
There ensued a couple of dusty and hope-deferred hours. From the smoking room, which yielded no results at all, he went to Mr. Francis's rooms, which he had fixed upon as being the most likely place for the conjectured passage to communicate with, but the strictest scrutiny of the panelling revealed nothing. He tapped every foot of it, and every foot sounded promisingly hollow, yet nothing of any sort could he discover which should yield him even a sixpence. There were cupboards of the most alluring probability; all wore the aspect of concealment, yet all declined to yield their secret.