"What I saw was no nightmare," I said. "I saw some sort of powder
dropped into Edwards' glass, and I saw a man pass into the jewel
chamber."
The Duke smiled tolerantly.
"My dear Mr. Lister," he protested, "if the man Edwards had been drugged
as you suggest, could he have attacked you in the way he did and got the
better of you in a scrap? Further, how was it possible for any one to
open the door of the jewel chamber without a key?"
He rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt a little higher, touched
the spring of his platinum bracelet, showed us the key and replaced it.
I said nothing. I continued to watch the Duke's face.
"Perhaps the most satisfactory part of your hallucination," he went on,
"is the fact that the jewels have neither been disturbed nor removed. I
beg, Mr. Lister," he concluded indulgently, "that you will not let this
unfortunate incident disturb any agreeable impressions you may have had
of your stay here. It has been a great pleasure to me to entertain you.
If you will allow me to refer for a moment to a business matter, my
steward has sent a cheque this morning to your agent. And if you will
allow me to offer you a slight memento of your stay here, I will ask you
to accept this bat from me. It is one of Wisden's, and I think the best
I have ever handled."
He held it out to me, and there passed between us one of those long and
silent glances which convey more than words. I held out my hand and
accepted the bat.
"Thank you, Duke," I said.
He stood away and lifted his cap. Then we drove off.
* * * * *
Mr. Thomson had his own methods of surprising us. Three nights after our
return to town, we found ourselves, for instance, under the great plane
tree at Ranelagh, drinking wonderful yellow chartreuse with our coffee,
listening to the music and to the little murmur of pleasant,
after-dinner conversation. The moment for which I had waited so eagerly
had come at last.
"On this occasion," our host remarked tolerantly, "I feel that I must be
a little more lenient than usual as regards questions. You came away
from Lorringham a little puzzled, I have no doubt?"
"We did indeed," I replied. "We want to know why the Duke was engaged in
a conspiracy to steal his own jewels, and why our mission there seemed
to be to prevent it."
"Quite a little romance," our host observed. "The Duke, as you may have
noticed, is very much in love with the Princess of Chantilly. The
Princess is one of those women in whom the love of jewels amounts to a
passion. The Lorringham pink pearls are, as you may know, priceless.
More than anything in the world the Princess desires to wear those
pearls."
"Then why doesn't she acquire them by marrying the Duke?" I asked.
"Because," Mr. Thomson explained, "in the trust deed relating to the
jewels they can none of them be moved outside the United Kingdom. The
Princess would never live in England for more than a month or so in the
year, which means that she would be separated from the jewels she loves
for the greater part of the time. The Duke has taken every sort of legal
opinion, and there is no doubt that if they were stolen from the Castle
and returned to him in some foreign country, there is no law which could
compel him to bring them back here. That is why the Duke connived at the
theft, which you prevented."
The elucidation was simple enough but scarcely satisfactory.
"If I had known this," I confessed, "I'm afraid my sympathies would
have been with the Duke."
Mr. Thomson smiled indulgently.
"That proves, then," he said, "how wise I am to explain these little
affairs with which you chance to become associated, afterwards instead
of before. You were acting for the insurance companies, who would have
to pay a very large sum to the vested estate if the jewels were stolen
from Lorringham. On their behalf," he added, handing me an oblong strip
of paper, "I am asked to hand you this cheque for five hundred pounds."