“What a silly question!”

“It isn’t at all a silly question. . . .  Tell me how many sovereigns you’ve seen in your life, and how many guineas?”

“O-oh! . . .  I think I see what you mean-”

“I congratulate you, I’m sure!  Now, I won’t swear, but I’m morally certain that guineas haven’t been what they call in circulation for years and years and years.”

“You’re always seeing them in subscription lists,” Miss Oliver objected.  “Take our Emergency Fund—­’Charles Pendarves Tresawna, Esq., J.P., twenty-five guineas.’”

“I seem to remember that the Squire paid by cheque,” said Mrs Polsue drily.

“But the guineas must have been there, in the Bank. . . .  Oh, I see!  You mean that a guinea being worth twenty-one shillings—­”

“That’s right:  you’re getting at it.  Though I declare, Charity Oliver, there are times when I don’t know which is furthest behind the times—­your head, or the coquelicots you insist on wearing upon it.  But now I hope you’ll admit I was right, and there’s a mystery about Nanjivell.  Whether ’tis mixed up with his immorality or separate I won’t pretend to decide, or not at this stage.”

“But anyway you can’t make out a guinea-piece to be German,” maintained Miss Oliver with a last show of obstinacy.

“I don’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that just yet,” Mrs Polsue replied.  “The newspapers tell us the Germans have been hoarding gold for a very long time.  But you mentioned the Bank a moment ago—­or did I?  Never mind:  it was a good suggestion anyway.  Wait while I send across for Mr Pamphlett.”

“Why, to be sure,” said Mr Pamphlett, “it’s a guinea—­a George the Second guinea.”  He pushed back a corner of the cloth and rang the coin on the table.  “Sound . . . and not clipped at all.  There’s always its intrinsic value, as we say:  and one of these days it will have an additional value as a curiosity.  But as yet that is almost negligible.  Oddly enough—­” He broke off, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and produced a guinea almost precisely similar.  Miss Oliver gasped:  it was so like a conjuring trick.

“Where did Miss Oliver get this one?” asked Mr Pamphlett, laying his right forefinger upon the guinea on the table while still holding the other displayed in the palm of his left hand.

“I got it,” confessed Miss Oliver, “off that youngest child of Samuel Penhaligon’s, who told me it had been given him as a present by Mr—­by Nicholas Nanjivell.”

“WHAT?”

She blanched, as Mr Pamphlett stared at her.  “His eyes,” as she explained later, “were round in his head-round as gooseberries.”

“Well, I suppose I oughtn’t to have taken it from the child. . . .  But seeing that he didn’t know its value, and there being something of a mystery in the whole business—­as Mary-Martha here will explain, though she will have it that the man is a German spy—­”

“Stuff and nonsense, ma’am! . . .  I beg your pardon:  you’re quite right:  there is a mystery here, though it has nothing to do with German spies.  I rather fancy I’m in a position to get to the bottom of it.”