Of course.  Not once had I thought of it.  Bare, stark, glaring up at the sun, lay the stone carved with the letters and the cross-bones.  Forgetting in the haste of my departure to replace the vines upon the grave, I had left the stone to shout its secret to the first comer.  And that had happened to be Mr. Tubbs.  Happened, I say, for I knew that he had not had the slightest notion where to look for the grave of Bill Halliwell.  This running to earth of clues was purely an affair of his own picturesque imagination.

I wondered uneasily what he had made of the uprooted vines—­but he would lay them to the pigs, no doubt.  In the countenance of Mr. Tubbs, flushed and exultant, there was no suspicion that the secret was not all his own.

Miss Higglesby-Browne had been settling her helmet more firmly upon her wiry locks.  She had a closed umbrella beneath her arm, and she drew and brandished it like a saber as she took a long stride forward.

“Mr. Tubbs,” she commanded, “lead on!”

But Mr. Tubbs did not lead on.  He stood quite still, regarding Miss Browne with a smile of infinite slyness.

“Oh, no indeed!” he said.  “Old H. H. wasn’t born yesterday.  It may have struck you that to possess the sole and exclusive knowledge of the whereabouts of a million or two—­ratin’ it low—­is some considerable of an asset.  And it’s one I ain’t got the least idee of partin’ with unless for inducements held out.”

Aunt Jane gave a faint shriek.  I had been silently debating what my own course should be in the face of this unexpected development.  Suddenly I saw my way quite clear.  I would say nothing.  Mr. Tubbs should reveal his own perfidy.  And the curtain should ring down upon the play, leaving Mr. Tubbs foiled all around, bereft both of the treasure and of Aunt Jane.  Oh, how I would enjoy the farce as it was played by the unconscious actors!  How I would step in at the end to reward virtue and punish guilt!  And how I would point the moral, later, very gently to Aunt Jane, an Aunt Jane all penitence and docility!

Little I dreamed what surprises ensuing acts of the play were to hold for me, or of their astounding contrast with the farce of my joyous imagination.

I took no part in the storm that raged round Mr. Tubbs.  It is said that in the heart of the tempest there is calm, and this great truth of natural philosophy Mr. Tubbs exemplified.  His face adorned by a seraphic, buttery smile, he stood unmoved, while Miss Higglesby-Browne uttered cyclonic exhortations and reproaches, while Aunt Jane sobbed and said, “Oh, Mr. Tubbs!” while Mr. Shaw strove to make himself heard above the din.  He did at least succeed in extracting from the traitor a definite statement of terms.  These were nothing less than fifty per cent. of the treasure, secured to him by a document signed, sealed and delivered into his own hands.  To a suggestion that as he had discovered the all-important tombstone so might some one else, he replied with tranquillity that he thought not, as he had taken precautions against such an eventuality.  In other words, as I was later to discover, the wily Mr. Tubbs had contrived to raise the boulder from its bed and push it over the cliff into the sea, afterward replacing the mass of vines upon the grave.