Putte downe ye Anciount riddel In Decente, Seemelie ordour. Rouse, O ye mystick Sybil, Vex Hymme who doth Endeavour, Nor treate Hys effortte tendour.
And in the winking of an eyelid the cipher leaped out before me. I did not reason it out. It just came to me--when I saw the VE in the next to the last line, I think.
"I've got it!" I shouted, and I sprang up and danced across the hearth, waving the paper in my hand. "I've got it!"
Hugh and Nikka regarded me in astonishment.
"It--the secret! The key! The cipher! The treas--"
But even as I started to say that, I thought better of it.
"No, that's going too far," I panted, breaking off in my mad dance. "I've got something, but how much it means is another matter."
"Talk sense, Jack," he ordered. "Show us your--"
"Here!" I shoved the copy of Lady Jane's doggerel in front of him and Nikka. "Now watch!"
I took a pencil and drew it through all except the first letters of the first and last words in each line. So:
[Illustration: verse with scratched-out words]
"Prior's Vent!" gasped Nikka. "He _has_ found something!"
And his eyes, too, sought the verse carved on the over-mantel.
"Up there, too! It can mean only one thing."
"That the secret to the location of the treasure is in the Prior's Vent!" I added triumphantly.
"Or can be reached through the Prior's Vent," amended Nikka.
Hugh, who had been in a brown study, aroused himself, and peered at the mass of the fireplace.
"I'm not trying to belittle Jack's discovery," he said slowly, "but you chaps must remember that we don't know where or what the Prior's Vent is."
"Except that you may take it for certain it is in this room," replied Nikka.
"And that perhaps the fireplace has something to do with it," I suggested.
"No, no, Jack, that won't wash. You, yourself, have measured that chimney area, and we all agreed there wasn't space inside it for a secret chamber. If I thought there was, I'd tear it down.'
"Hold on," counseled Nikka. "Easy does it. For the first time we've got something to go upon. Let's chew it over for a while, and see what we can make of it."
We chewed it over until bedtime without reaching any decision.
It was a long time before I went to sleep. Lady Jane's cipher and its inconclusive information kept buzzing through my head. But at last I dozed off and dreamed of fat monks who popped out of a round hole in a courtyard in endless succession until one of their number, stouter than the rest, became wedged in the opening. He babbled profanely in Latin, and I started to go to his aid--and waked up.