They had to be helped on board with their unwieldy freight and when this exercise had been accomplished, it seemed only decent to get them down the companion-way into the saloon. Here the other passengers were assembled and about to go to bed. They formed themselves into a sort of chain gang and by this means assembled the Hewsons’ purchases on three of the tables. Newspaper was spread on the deck.

‘We just ran crazy,’ Miss Hewson panted. ‘We just don’t know what’s with us when we get loose on an antique spree, do we, Earl?’

‘You said it, dear,’ her brother conceded.

‘Where,’ asked Mr Pollock, ‘will you put it?’ Feeling, perhaps, that his choice of words was unfortunate, he threw a frightened glance at Mr Lazenby.

‘Well! Now!’ Miss Hewson said. ‘We don’t figure we have a problem there, do we, dear? We figure if we talk pretty to the Skipper and Mrs Tretheway we might be allowed to cache it in Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s stateroom. We just kind of took a calculated risk on that one didn’t we, dear?’

‘Sure did, honey.’

‘The Tretheways,’ Pollock said, ‘have gone to bed.’

‘Looks like we’ll have to step up the calculated risk, some,’ Mr Hewson said dryly.

Mr Lazenby was peering with undisguised curiosity at their booty and so were Troy and Bard. There was an inlaid rosewood box, a newspaper parcel from which horse-brasses partly emerged, a pair of carriage-lamps and, packed piecemeal into an open beer-carton, a wag-at-the-wall Victorian clock.

Propped against the table was a really filthy roll of what appeared through encrustations of mud to be a collection of prints tied together with an ancient piece of twine.

It was over this trove that Miss Hewson seemed principally to gloat. She had found it, she explained, together with their other purchases, in the yard of the junk shop where Troy had seen them that first night in Tollardwark. Something had told Miss Hewson she would draw a rich reward if she could explore that yard and sure enough, jammed into a compartment in an Edwardian sideboard, all doubled up, as they could see if they looked, there it was.