Look here, old friend, I will strain a point.

I will go out into the garden again and walk about for an hour, and while I am out, if you should take advantage of my absence to creep up to your son's room and to search it thoroughly, examining every board of the floor to see if it is loose, and should you find anything concealed, to take it and hide it, of course I cannot help it.

The things, if there are any, might secretly be packed up by you in a box and sent up to Bow Street, with a line inside, saying that they are proceeds of robbery, and that you hope the owners will be traced and their property restored to them.

Not, of course, in your own hand, and without a signature.

There might be some little trouble in managing it, but it could, no doubt, be done." John Thorndyke went out into the garden without another word.