The sacrifice could of course only be for a purpose, and the purpose could only be the creation of a secret compartment.Peter Baron was still boy enough to be thrilled by the idea of such a feature, the more so as every indication of it had been cleverly concealed.The people at the shop had never noticed it, else they would have called his attention to it as an enhancement of value.His legendary lore instructed him that where there was a hiding-place there was always a hidden spring, and he pried and pressed and fumbled in an eager search for the sensitive spot.The article was really a wonder of neat construction; everything fitted with a closeness that completely saved appearances.
It took Baron some minutes to pursue his inquiry, during which he reflected that the people of the shop were not such fools after all.
They had admitted moreover that they had accidentally neglected this relic of gentility--it had been overlooked in the multiplicity of their treasures.He now recalled that the man had wanted to polish it up before sending it home, and that, satisfied for his own part with its honourable appearance and averse in general to shiny furniture, he had in his impatience declined to wait for such an operation, so that the object had left the place for Jersey Villas, carrying presumably its secret with it, two or three hours after his visit.This secret it seemed indeed capable of keeping; there was an absurdity in being baffled, but Peter couldn't find the spring.He thumped and sounded, he listened and measured again; he inspected every joint and crevice, with the effect of becoming surer still of the existence of a chamber and of making up his mind that his davenport was a rarity.Not only was there a compartment between the two backs, but there was distinctly something IN the compartment!
Perhaps it was a lost manuscript--a nice, safe, old-fashioned story that Mr.Locket wouldn't object to.Peter returned to the charge, for it had occurred to him that he had perhaps not sufficiently visited the small drawers, of which, in two vertical rows, there were six in number, of different sizes, inserted sideways into that portion of the structure which formed part of the support of the desk.He took them out again and examined more minutely the condition of their sockets, with the happy result of discovering at last, in the place into which the third on the left-hand row was fitted, a small sliding panel.Behind the panel was a spring, like a flat button, which yielded with a click when he pressed it and which instantly produced a loosening of one of the pieces of the shelf forming the highest part of the davenport--pieces adjusted to each other with the most deceptive closeness.
This particular piece proved to be, in its turn, a sliding panel, which, when pushed, revealed the existence of a smaller receptacle, a narrow, oblong box, in the false back.Its capacity was limited, but if it couldn't hold many things it might hold precious ones.Baron, in presence of the ingenuity with which it had been dissimulated, immediately felt that, but for the odd chance of little Sidney Ryves's having hammered on the outside at the moment he himself happened to have his head in the desk, he might have remained for years without suspicion of it.This apparently would have been a loss, for he had been right in guessing that the chamber was not empty.It contained objects which, whether precious or not, had at any rate been worth somebody's hiding.These objects were a collection of small fiat parcels, of the shape of packets of letters, wrapped in white paper and neatly sealed.The seals, mechanically figured, bore the impress neither of arms nor of initials; the paper looked old--it had turned faintly sallow; the packets might have been there for ages.Baron counted them--there were nine in all, of different sizes; he turned them over and over, felt them curiously and snuffed in their vague, musty smell, which affected him with the melancholy of some smothered human accent.The little bundles were neither named nor numbered--there was not a word of writing on any of the covers; but they plainly contained old letters, sorted and matched according to dates or to authorship.They told some old, dead story--they were the ashes of fires burned out.
As Peter Baron held his discoveries successively in his hands he became conscious of a queer emotion which was not altogether elation and yet was still less pure pain.He had made a find, but it somehow added to his responsibility; he was in the presence of something interesting, but (in a manner he couldn't have defined) this circumstance suddenly constituted a danger.It was the perception of the danger, for instance, which caused to remain in abeyance any impulse he might have felt to break one of the seals.He looked at them all narrowly, but he was careful not to loosen them, and he wondered uncomfortably whether the contents of the secret compartment would be held in equity to be the property of the people in the King's Road.He had given money for the davenport, but had he given money for these buried papers? He paid by a growing consciousness that a nameless chill had stolen into the air the penalty, which he had many a time paid before, of being made of sensitive stuff.It was as if an occasion had insidiously arisen for a sacrifice--a sacrifice for the sake of a fine superstition, something like honour or kindness or justice, something indeed perhaps even finer still--a difficult deciphering of duty, an impossible tantalising wisdom.
