Authors: Dick Francis
To the Hilt (38 page)
“Go
on
, ” he said, when I paused. “What then?”
on
, ” he said, when I paused. “What then?”
“Then I wrapped the foil bundle in the cotton duck, and super-glued it so that it wouldn’t fall undone. Then all over the surface I super-glued granite pieces”—I waved a hand at the gray stony ground of the plateau—“and then ... well, the more metal you offer to a detector, the more it gets confused, so I put the hilt bundle where it was more or less surrounded by metal ...”
“But,” he objected, “they dug up that whole old oven, and the Hilt wasn’t in it ...”
“I told you,” I said, “I didn’t bury it. I glued it onto the mountain.”
“You did ...
what?”
what?”
“I glued it granite to granite, and covered it with more granite pieces until you can’t distinguish it by eye from the rock around it. I check it fairly often. It never moves.”
He looked at the metal detector in his hands.
“Turn it upside down,” I said.
He did as I said, waving the flat round plate in the air.
“Now I’ll switch it on,” I said, and did so. “And,” I said formally, laughing, “my lord, follow me.”
I walked not up onto the hill, as he obviously expected, but into my corrugated iron-topped carport.
The waving upside-down metal detector whined nonstop.
“If you go to the rear wall,” I said, “and stand just there”—I pointed—“you will hear the indistinguishable noise of the Honor of the Kinlochs, which is up on the carport roof, where it joins the mountain. If you stand just there, the hilt of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s ceremonial sword will be straight above your head.”
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