"Well, look at that, now!" he said, as I showed him first the mummified
body, then the sacks of gold, and pointed out to him the great hole cut
in the ceiling. "Well, look at that, now!" he repeated.
"The awkward part of the affair is this," I said at last. "Who is going
to lodge information? I don't care to, for, if I do, inquiries will be
made as to how I came to be on the premises at all, and how I managed to
get in, and it won't look well if I am proved, on my own showing, to
have entered the place secretly in the middle of the night. Again, I
don't want to lodge information against Sir Charles Thorold. Why should
I? He has always been my friend. Nor, for that matter, do I want to
prefer any sort of charge against Whichelo. So far as the body is
concerned, we may be quite wrong in conjecturing that there has been
foul play. Indeed, there is no actual proof that the mummy was hidden
in the ceiling of the room, though personally I think it must have been.
Everything points to it. And you, Bennett, can't very well give
information either without compromising yourself as well as me. Your
inspector would want to know how you managed to get into the house, and
what right you had to enter it."
I paused, considering, while he removed his helmet and scratched his
head.
"I'll tell you what I think we had better do," I said at last.
"Well, sir, what?" he inquired eagerly.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Go back to your beat. I'll bolt and chain
the front door when you're gone. Then I'll put out the light in this
room, and make my way out of the house by the way I entered it."
"But the two men," the policeman said quickly. "Where can they have got
to? They can't have left the premises."
"You may depend upon it they have," I answered. "I feel pretty sure
there must be some secret entrance to this house, that they alone know.
The back door, too, is bolted and chained on the inside, and they can
hardly have entered the way I did--ugh!" and I shuddered again at the
thought of those horrible, hairy-legged spiders scampering over my bare
flesh.
"_Meet me_ 2."
Again that odd little advertisement arose in my thoughts. I would watch
the front page of the _Morning Post_ for a day or two. Perhaps another
advertisement might appear that would help me.
Early next day I went and told Vera everything. I found her seated in
the lounge on the right of the hall.
She listened eagerly, and I saw at once that the news excited her a good
deal, yet to my surprise she made no comment, but changed the subject of
conversation by remarking--
"Violet brought Frank Faulkner here yesterday evening. He is engaged to
be married to her. He has broken off his engagement to Gladys Deroxe,
and I am very glad he has," she declared.
"Really," I exclaimed. "Well, frankly I'm not surprised, for I believe
he has been in love with Violet from the moment he first met her. But
how did Miss Deroxe take it? Was there a dreadful scene?"
"Scene? There was no scene at all, it appears. What happened was
simply this. Gladys discovered that Frank had brought Violet over from
the Riviera, that she was staying here at his expense, and that he
seemed to be extremely attentive to her. Now, a sensible girl would
have asked her future husband, in a case of that sort, to come to see
her and explain everything. That, certainly, is what I should have
done."
"And what did Miss Deroxe do?"
"Do? Good Heavens, she sat down then and there and wrote him a letter--
oh! such a letter! He showed it to me. I have never in my life read
anything so insulting. She ended by telling him in writing that she had
never really cared for him, and that she hoped she would never see him
again. In one place she wrote: `I might have guessed the kind of man
you are by the kind of company you keep. I know all about your friend,
Richard Ashton. He associates with dreadful people. I am only glad I
have found you out before it was too late!' Those were her words. So
you see the kind of reputation you have acquired, my dear Dick."
I laughed--laughed uproariously. I, "the associate of dreadful people,"
I, a member of that hot-bed of conventions and of respectability,
Brooks's Club. The whole thing was delicious.
"When will Frank and Violet be here again?"
I asked presently, after we had ascended together to the private
sitting-room.
"I've invited Frank to lunch. I told them you were coming. Frank has
something important to tell you, he said."
"Did he tell you what?"
"No. At least it had reference, he said, to the Chateau d'Uzerche, or
to something that has been found there. To tell the truth, I was
thinking of something else when he told me."
"Dearest," I said, some minutes later, my arm about her waist, "you
remember my telling you I had taken a few of the coins I found in your
father's house. Well, yesterday I had them tested. They are not
counterfeits. They are genuine."