ssure, and as he gazed,
motionless, a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the
very centre of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snake-like coils
above it. And then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and
shot up into the air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing
like a cinder, black, and crumbling to the touch.

IX

THE SECRET OF GORESTHORPE GRANGE

A. Conan Doyle

I am sure that Nature never intended me to be a self-made man. There
are times when I can hardly bring myself to realize that twenty years
of my life were spent behind the counter of a grocer's shop in the East
End of London, and that it was through such an avenue that I reached a
wealthy independence and the possession of Goresthorpe Grange. My
habits are Conservative, and my tastes refined and aristocratic. I have
a soul which spurns the vulgar herd. Our family, the D'Odds, date back
to a prehistoric era, as is to be inferred from the fact that their
advent into British history is not commented on by any trustworthy
historian. Some instinct tells me that the blood of a Crusader runs in
my veins. Even now, after the lapse of so many years, such exclamations
as "By'r Lady!" rise naturally to my lips, and I feel that, should
circumstances require it, I am capable of rising in my stirrups and
dealing an infidel a blow--say with a mace--which would considerably
astonish him.

Goresthorpe Grange is a feudal mansion--or so it was termed in the
advertisement which originally brought it under my notice. Its right to
this adjective had a most remarkable effect upon its price, and the
advantages gained may possibly be more sentimental than real. Still, it
is soothing to me to know that I have slits in my staircase through
which I can discharge arrows: and there is a sense of power in the fact
of possessing a complicated apparatus by means of which I am enabled to
pour molten lead upon the head of the casual visitor. These things
chime in with my peculiar humour, and I do not grudge to pay for them.
I am proud of my battlements and of the circular uncovered sewer which
girds me round. I am proud of my portcullis and donjon and keep. There
is but one thing wanting to round off the mediaevalism of my abode, and
to render it symmetrically and completely antique. Goresthorpe Grange
is not provided with a ghost.

Any man with old-fashioned tastes and ideas as to how such
establishments should be conducted would have be