A light came into Harold March’s eyes as he suddenly saw, as if afar off, the wider implication of the suggestion.  But Twyford was still wrestling with one problem at a time.

“Do you really mean,” he said, “that Colonel Morris took the relic?”

“He was the only person who could use the magnet,” replied Fisher.  “In fact, your obliging nephew left him a number of things he could use.  He had a ball of string, and an instrument for making a hole in the wooden floor—­I made a little play with that hole in the floor in my trance, by the way; with the lights left on below, it shone like a new shilling.”  Twyford suddenly bounded on his chair.  “But in that case,” he cried, in a new and altered voice, “why then of course—­ You said a piece of steel—?”

“I said there were two pieces of steel,” said Fisher.  “The bent piece of steel was the boy’s magnet.  The other was the relic in the glass case.”

“But that is silver,” answered the archaeologist, in a voice now almost unrecognizable.

“Oh,” replied Fisher, soothingly, “I dare say it was painted with silver a little.”

There was a heavy silence, and at last Harold March said, “But where is the real relic?”

“Where it has been for five years,” replied Horne Fisher, “in the possession of a mad millionaire named Vandam, in Nebraska.  There was a playful little photograph about him in a society paper the other day, mentioning his delusion, and saying he was always being taken in about relics.”

Harold March frowned at the tablecloth; then, after an interval, he said:  “I think I understand your notion of how the thing was actually done; according to that, Morris just made a hole and fished it up with a magnet at the end of a string.  Such a monkey trick looks like mere madness, but I suppose he was mad, partly with the boredom of watching over what he felt was a fraud, though he couldn’t prove it.  Then came a chance to prove it, to himself at least, and he had what he called ‘fun’ with it.  Yes, I think I see a lot of details now.  But it’s just the whole thing that knocks me.  How did it all come to be like that?”

Fisher was looking at him with level lids and an immovable manner.

“Every precaution was taken,” he said.  “The Duke carried the relic on his own person, and locked it up in the case with his own hands.”

March was silent; but Twyford stammered.  “I don’t understand you.  You give me the creeps.  Why don’t you speak plainer?”

“If I spoke plainer you would understand me less,” said Horne Fisher.

“All the same I should try,” said March, still without lifting his head.

“Oh, very well,” replied Fisher, with a sigh; “the plain truth is, of course, that it’s a bad business.  Everybody knows it’s a bad business who knows anything about it.  But it’s always happening, and in one way one can hardly blame them.  They get stuck on to a foreign princess that’s as stiff as a Dutch doll, and they have their fling.  In this case it was a pretty big fling.”