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hunt.’
    ‘Oh, that!’ Not very successfully, Charles tried to give the impression that Treskinnick and all its affairs had been far from his mind. ‘I still don’t quite get your point.’
    ‘Doubloons and moidores and pieces of eight. Don’t you know that at one time the North Tower was supposed to be stuffed with them? The old wrecked Spanish galleon story. It attaches to any house of the slightest consequence on our coast – just as do yarns of wreckers and smugglers. Highly improbable that there’s a word of truth in it. But not more improbable than this Adrian Digitt vagary that the old folks at home have started up with.’
    ‘I’ve never heard of our Spanish galleon.’ Charles said this rather dryly, since he had a strong suspicion that Archie had just made it up – this by way of a devious approach to something that in fact interested both of them much more strongly. But then he remembered Miss Digitt’s line of talk about the North Tower and its former riches (which had included a beautiful maiden) as a matter of family report. So perhaps there really had been some sort of old wives’ tale about a foundered argosy. ‘But I have heard just a word or two about this Adrian Digitt’s lost papers,’ Charles went on. ‘You think it’s all moonshine?’
    ‘Oh, most absolutely. Have you looked at the wine list? The Rioja is probably all right, but I seem to remember they have a capital Haut Brion ’66.’
    Charles ordered Rioja. There were limits – particularly to go along with the food in prospect. And he wasn’t doing any sort of sucking-up act on Archie. He was just proposing to himself a very cautious exploratory exercise.
    ‘I don’t myself see anything inherently improbable,’ he said, ‘in this Adrian’s having dumped some papers in the castle. And I do vaguely gather he knew some quite interesting people.’
    ‘It seems so. And I agree it’s worth spending a few pennies – my father’s pennies – on some sort of look-see. I’m arranging it, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘I’ve heard that too, Archie. Bringing in a professional, I gather. Well, good luck to him. Have you actually found your man?’
    ‘I rather think so. One has to be careful, of course. And there isn’t all that hurry.’
    ‘If the whole notion is moonshine, as you say, there clearly isn’t any hurry at all – or only so much as will satisfy your parents that something is being done. By the way, have you had a hunt through the stuff yourself?’
    ‘I’ve taken a quick look once or twice, Charles. But it’s a grubby ploy: dust and mildew and cobweb.’
    ‘So I’d suppose. And you didn’t come on the slightest trace of anything interesting – either by or about this Adrian Digitt?’
    ‘Nothing at all.’
    ‘Suppose there is nothing at all up there in the tower. Would you say, Archie, that that’s an end of the matter?’
    ‘Obviously.’
    ‘I don’t think you understand me. The man must often enough have put pen to paper. And received letters and so forth from this chap and that. Isn’t it probable that some portions, at least, of all this do survive – if not at Treskinnick, then somewhere else? Although I confess I’ve myself nowhere to suggest. If we knew just a few facts about his life, it might help.’
    ‘Oh, I see.’ Lord Skillet cast a speculative eye on his cousin. ‘Perhaps this old mole we’re hiring may run up a bit of a biography. It would be the orderly thing.’
    There was a pause while a waiter poured the unassuming Spanish wine. Archie, Charles reflected, wasn’t going to be easy to draw. But it seemed reasonable to believe that he knew nothing of Miss Deborah Digitt’s papers. Perhaps it hadn’t even occurred to him that she was Adrian’s direct descendant. Of course he was bound to catch up on all this sooner or later. But at the moment it looked as if Charles had a good start in that quarter.
    ‘Shelley seems to be the fellow that the learned chiefly associate with