He
thought, "Now he'll have to believe me." That Lord Yalding should
believe him had become, quite unreasonably, the most important
thing in the world to Jimmy. He wished that Gerald and Kathleen
were there to share his triumph, but they were helping Mabel's
aunt to cover the grand furniture up, and so were out of what
followed. Not that they missed much, for when Mabel proudly
said, "Now you'll see, and the others came close round her in the
little panelled room, there was a pause, and then nothing happened
at all!
"There's a secret spring here somewhere," said Mabel, fumbling
with fingers that had suddenly grown hot and damp.
"Where?" said Lord Yalding.
"Here," said Mabel impatiently, "only I can't find it."
And she couldn't. She found the spring of the secret panel under
the window all right, but that seemed to everyone dull compared
with the jewels that everyone had pictured and two at least had
seen. But the spring that made the oak panelling slide away and
displayed jewels plainly to any eye worth a king's ransom this
could not be found. More, it was simply not there. There could be
no doubt of that. Every inch of the panelling was felt by careful
fingers. The earnest protests of Mabel and Jimmy died away
presently in a silence made painful by the hotness of one's ears, the
discomfort of not liking to meet anyone's eyes, and the resentful
feeling that the spring was not behaving in at all a sportsmanlike
way, and that, in a word, this was not cricket.
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