Mrs. Warrender laughed shakily and held up the diamonds which Penny had just handed to her to the fading light from the window.

"If these are real, and I think they are," she said, "I'm going to see that the money is properly used and not the root of all evil...! This means lots of extra things for the Dolphin and the most important things for Jon and Penny, too..." but Penny saw tears in her eyes and changed the subject quickly by asking about Miss Ballinger and Slinky.

Mr. Morton explained as well as he could what the police had told them this morning.

"As far as we could make out from the detective who came over from Hastings..."

"A real detective?" Dickie interrupted. "A real detective came and you let us stay in bed?"

Mr. Morton ignored the interruption.

"It seems that Miss Ballinger has been watched for some time, because she appears to have had some dubious dealings with antiques and pictures. They had not anything definite against her, but there is no doubt that she was a suspicious character. Grandon was her assistant and accomplice, and between them they must have heard of this treasure. It may be that Grandon came to the Dolphin - and we haven't found out just exactly when he did come to old Mr. Charles - in order to discover if there really was a treasure. Anyway, the police believe that Miss Ballinger forged the letter recommending Mrs. Warrender to keep Slinky, as you call him so aptly, on at the Dolphin. How and when the passage was discovered we don't know, but almost certainly through the entrance into Grandon's room, and this was very lucky for him... But, of course, Ballinger was the brains and the police are very keen to find her and her pretty niece as soon as possible."

"Have they got anything against that girl?" Jon asked.

"We didn't ask and we don't know whether she really is a niece or just an accomplice."

David replied: "Whatever she may have done wrong she did come back after Ballinger had locked us in. She smashed the window and threw in the key of the front room where the twins were, and I'm sure she was against leaving us there, anyway, and that's something in her favour."

"I still don't know everything you've been doing these last few days," Mrs. Warrender said to her two, "but I s'pose you will tell the old people some time, won't you? Meanwhile, I think Mrs. Morton will agree that it should be early bed for everybody tonight."

"But we've only just got up," Dickie protested.

"Might as well have stayed in our pyjamas," Mary added.

"I'm not going to bed again," said Penny, and, "You don't really mean that, do you, Mother?" Jon asked.

"Anyway, I'm hungry," Dickie went on, "and it's bad to go to bed on an empty stummick."