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“Why did you mention the chest?” I asked.

“I don’t know. As a kid, every time I watched a pirate movie I would think about that chest,” Jared said and had another sip from his glass. “In any case, I’m sure you did everything you could to find him.”

Back in the taxi, I was thinking about that chest. Did we check it before it was moved down to the cellar? Of course, we didn’t. I was too worried about the police, and it never occurred to me that someone could’ve been hiding in it. Besides, I was not actually there when a couple of our footmen carried it down upon my request. No, it was crazy, but it’s driving me off the wall now. I had to be sure.

I arrived at the train station on time and gave a generous tip to my indifferent taxi driver. I got on the train and threw myself into the seat. Now I could think a bit.

“Alex?”

I turned my head and saw my old university friend James Harding. His family were our neighbors. The Hardings had lived in the area where our estate was long before Ezekiel Montague arrived but lost most of their land piece by piece over the years. They had been land-rich but cash-poor and had to make a lot of compromises to stay afloat. They still owned their Baroque-style manor house, Wintersmith Hall, which was built in the late 1600s, but was mostly uninhabitable due to lack of proper maintenance and funding. James’s family had been occupying one wing and using former stables for their needs for as long as I can remember. Our fathers were friends, until James’s dad passed away seven years ago, but our great-grandfathers weren’t as such. I remembered my father used to tell me that when I became the head of the family, I would have to make sure that the Hardings were always welcome in the house. I used to see him and his family at the parties that my parents had organized, but we hadn’t been awfully close. Perhaps the closeness of our fathers had been the reason why James and I went to the same university and that technically made us close enough to call each other friends. He studied history and I took business courses. After graduation, we didn’t keep in touch much but occasionally saw each other at different events in town.