He paused, apparently on the point of telling me as much.  I saw that I had read him aright.

“I am merely to be quiet and trust everything to you,” I continued.

“Oh, well,—­if you—­”

“One moment—­let me take a few more words out of your mouth.  You are not certain, I am to remember, that anything will come of it, but you think something will.  You think you may say that much.  But I am again to remember not to talk about it.  There!  That’s it, isn’t it?”

He was entirely serious.

“Well, that’s practically it.  But I don’t mind hinting a little, in strict confidence.”  He dropped into a chair, sitting earnestly forward.

“You see, Cal, I remembered a little remark Mrs. Potts once made.  I believe it was the day after Mrs. Lansdale entertained the ladies’ club last summer—­I remember she was complaining of a headache—­”

“I never knew Mrs. Potts to make a little remark,” I said.  I was not to be trifled with.  Solon grinned.

“Well, perhaps this one wasn’t so very little, only I never thought of it again until this morning.  It was about Mrs. Lansdale’s furniture.”

“Indeed,” I said in cold disinterest, having designed to be told more.

“Well, Mrs. Potts thinks there may be something in it.”

His effort was to seem significant, but those things are apt to fail with me.

“Oh, I see.  Well, that’s a good idea, Solon, but you and Mrs. Potts are slow.  Billy Durgin had the same idea last summer while the furniture was being unloaded.  He took a good look at some of those old pieces, and he confided to me in strict secrecy that there were probably missing wills and rolls of banknotes hidden away in them.  It seems that they’re the kind that have secret drawers.  Billy knows a case where a man touched a spring and found thirty thousand dollars in a secret drawer, ’and from there,’ as Billy says, ‘he fled to Australia.’  So you can see it’s been thought of.  Of course I’ve never spoken of it, because I promised Billy not to,—­but there’s nothing in it.”

“Bosh!” said Solon.

“Of course it’s bosh.  I could have told Billy that, but some way I always feel tender about his illusions.  You may be sure I’ve learned enough of the Lansdale family to know that no member of it ever hid any real money—­money that would spend—­and there hasn’t been a will missing for at least six generations.”

“Bosh again!” said Solon.  “It isn’t secret drawers!”

“No?  What then?”

“Well,—­it’s worse—­and more of it.”

“Is that all you have to say?” I asked as he stood up.

“Well, that’s all I can say now.  We must use common sense in these matters.  But—­Mrs. Potts has written!” With this cryptic utterance he stalked out.

There had been little need to caution me to secrecy.  I was not tempted to speak.  Had I known any debtor of Miss Caroline’s who would have taken “Mrs. Potts has written” in payment of his account, it might have been otherwise.