After the first moment of stupefaction, Lady McIntyre's, "Oh--a--is that
all?" resolutely proclaimed there was nothing out of the way in a
governess having a box half full of ... books chiefly, weren't they?
The first thing Grindley took out was a roll of tracing-paper. He undid
it. He smoothed it flat. He turned it over. He held it up to the light.
"Nothing! Not a thing!" breathed the lady.
Three pairs of eyes had fallen simultaneously on a letter which had been
underneath the roll of paper--a letter unaddressed, in a sealed
envelope. Grindley opened it. Singleton leaned over to read it, too. All
that Napier could see was that the communication appeared to be in
German script, not written compactly, as the national instinct for
economy seems to inculcate. The lines were wide apart. Grindley's thick
finger, traversing the blank space, seemed to emphasize this fact.
"Nothing there," said Singleton, dipping his hand in the box again.
"Nothing that jumps to the eye." Grindley laid letter and envelope on
the floor by the tracing-paper. Out of a shallow cardboard box, full of
numbered films, Singleton had briskly helped himself to one after
another. He held each in turn up to the light--held the first two so
that Grindley could see them.
"To _keep_ such things! It's the kind of extraordinarily rash things
they do." A look of understanding passed between the two secret-service
men.
"They?" inquired Lady McIntyre, and as no one answered, "Rash?" She
turned her helpless eyes on Napier. "What a world to live in, when to
take a little picnic snap-shots is 'rash'!"
"You have a dark room? She develops her own photographs?"
Lady McIntyre swung her ear-rings.
While Singleton was running rapidly through the picture series, Grindley
took out a book--a leather-covered book, with a lock.
"A diary, that is, just like mine," said Lady McIntyre. "Her diary had a
lock, too," she said. But the fact did not save this one from
desecration. Off came the lock at the edge of the chisel, and Grindley
was bending his head over pages of exquisite writing. That it was
German, seemed in no wise to disconcert Grindley. "Plain sailing," was
his comment as he handed the book over to Singleton, who, with a kind of
affectionate regret, put down the two films he had been studying side by
side. "Very instructive, seen _seriatim_," he remarked, as he swept them
toward the case, and took the diary.
Whether it was a fellow feeling for this private chronicle with the lock
like hers, yet so ineffectual, certainly the sight of Greta's diary
being passed from one strange hand to another made a sudden breach in
Lady McIntyre's hard-won self-control.
"How you _can_!" She leaned forward to cast the three words into the
dull face again over Greta's box. Grindley's hand was about to close
upon a little gray silk bag which had fallen out of an envelope. Lady
McIntyre was before him.
"I'll see what that is!" she said.
Napier winced in anticipation of the undignified struggle to which Lady
McIntyre's action had laid her open.
But not at all. Grindley's good manners suffered him to make only the
most civil protest.
"I wouldn't, really. Please, take care!"
Too late. Lady McIntyre had untied the drawstring and opened the
innocent-looking, feminine thing, only to draw back, choking. Then she
sneezed loudly. She sneezed without intermission, as she held the bag
out at arm's length.
"Wha-atchew! What-atchew--_is_ it? Chew!"
Grindley, handling the bag with caution, returned it to the thick waxed
envelope and added that to his collection. Singleton had looked up an
instant from his reading, sympathy in his attitude, a gleam of
entertainment in his eye at recognition of this new object lesson in the
unadvisability of a lady's poking her nose where a secret-service man
warns her not to.
Napier stood anxiously over Lady McIntyre during the final paroxysm.
"What was that stuff?" he demanded of the oblivious Grindley.
"Usually snuff and cayenne," Singleton answered for him. "Harmless,
unless it's flung into the eyes."
"_Flung in!_" gasped Lady McIntyre, receiving, as it were, full in the
face her first staggering suspicion.
"If you get only a whiff, the thing to do is to gargle and bathe the
eyes," Singleton advised politely, and fell upon his book again, like
some intrigued reader of romance.
Lady McIntyre declined to go away to bathe and gargle. She sat wiping
her streaming eyes and letting loose an occasional sneeze.
There still remained in the boot box, as Napier had seen, two
modest-sized receptacles to be examined. One was of nickel or silver;
the other, a trifle larger, appeared, as Grindley lifted it out, to be
an ordinary japanned cash-box, with the key sticking in the lock.
"Achew! chew! chew!" said Lady McIntyre, trying to clear her watery
vision, the better to verify the fact that the box was full of English
gold--most of it done up in amateur rouleaux of twenty pounds each,
sealed at each end.
Surprising, but not criminal, Lady McIntyre's inflamed face seemed to
say. "Maybe," she wedged the words in between a couple of less violent
sneezes; already she was steadying herself after the shock of knowing
that gray bag of devilment in Greta's possession--"maybe she is
custodian--others'--savings--some refugee."
Grindley had tumbled the rouleaux and the loose gold into his
handkerchief. He knotted it and threw it into his case.
"I shall tell her!" Lady McIntyre's still streaming eyes arraigned him.
"She shall know you've got it."
"Of course," said Grindley.
"And now for the jewel case." Reluctantly Singleton closed the diary.
But it wasn't a jewel case. No close observer needed Singleton's, "This
is what you were looking for," to recognize Grindley's satisfaction at
discovering a spirit lamp and alcohol flask fitted neatly into the box.
"It's to heat curling-tongs," said Lady McIntyre in her rasped and
clouded voice. "That's all it is. Nothing in this world but the
arrangement to heat her tongs. Every woman--"
"Miss von Schwarzenberg doesn't curl her hair with tongs," said the
astonishing Grindley, a man you wouldn't have expected to know if a
woman's hair were green and dressed in pot-hooks.
"How do you know she doesn't use tongs?" Napier could not forbear
asking. Grindley, working with the lamp, made no reply.
"Do we understand you to say she does curl her hair with tongs?"
Singleton inquired politely of Lady McIntyre. It was clear to the pair
that part of Singleton's affair was to transact his business with as
little friction as possible, to establish cooperation in the most
unlikely quarters. "You _can't_ say she uses tongs," he said
persuasively.
"I certainly cannot say she doesn't. Neither can you." Lady McIntyre
stuck to her point as if she knew what hung upon it.
Grindley had unscrewed the wick cap. If she didn't use tongs, certainly
she had used the lamp; the wick was charred. He lifted out the receiver
and shook it. "Nearly full," he said.
Singleton was rapidly going through the few things left in the bottom of
the safe. Several leather jewel cases. They revealed a truly astonishing
store--chiefly diamonds.
"She can have these back at once," Singleton said, setting the cases
down by Lady McIntyre's feet.
Grindley still hung over the alcohol lamp. He had found narrow metal
bands folded down at the sides of the box. They were supports, as he
proved by setting them upright, and in relation to yet others, with
which they formed an overhead platform above that wired bed, which was
so much more extensive than was necessary to supply the flame for the
heating of tongs. But Grindley seemed to find no flaw in the
arrangement. He made libation of alcohol, and felt for a match. As the
wavering blue flame played along the wire mattress under the tester-like
frame, Grindley put out a hand for the tracing-paper.
The conviction flashed across Napier's mind, bringing with it a twinge
of acute distaste: Grindley's enjoying himself. Not that the vacant eyes
achieved vision, nor the blunt features keenness. But Grindley was given
up to a pleasureable absorption; an intentness that should
not--considering his task--and yet somehow did insist on seeming less of
the intellect than of the sensory nerves. It was the same look you will
see on the face of the heavy feeder. A slight congestion; a gloss, as of
a faint perspiration. Napier was sure that, apart from Grindley's
professional stake in the issue of the hour, he was living through
highly compensatory moments, as he watched the heat bringing out marks
in the tracing paper. Very slowly the faint lines blackened.... Grindley
showed no impatience; nothing but that gloating, with its suggestion of
sensual abandonment. During those moments of waiting, Napier struggled
against the injustice of his impression. What, after all, were they
looking on at? Wasn't Grindley's satisfaction the same in its lesser
degree as that Champollion felt when he forced the Rosetta Stone to
yield the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics? Champollion used his wits to
serve the ends of learning. Grindley was using his to serve his country.
Why, then, did one feel a horrible kind of guilty excitement rather than
honorable pride, as the heat of Grindley's lamp brought out clean and
clear an outline drawing to scale of a new system of fortification on
the northern coast?
Napier could hardly repress an explosion of consternation at the sight.
But the only audible sound, except a crackling of the tracing-paper, as
Grindley held it up, was Lady McIntyre's bewildered, "What do you call
that?"
Grindley had thrown it down for Singleton to deal with, and now the
unaddressed letter was being laid on the grille. Here for some reason
the invisible ink answered less reluctantly to the warmth of the blue
flames' invitation. Between the wide-apart lines appeared like magic the
second letter. Again that stillness, a kind of drunkenness of pleasure
on Grindley's part; again Singleton's quick reaction to success; again,
the instant the lamp had done the work, its abandonment by Grindley. He
looked at his watch. "I suppose we mustn't go without--" He moved toward
the screen.
Lady McIntyre had made no effort to read a syllable of the new writing.
She sat intensely quiet, while Singleton folded the letter and blew out
the lamp. All her exclamatory speech, all her fluttering motions, were
as stilled as death would one day leave them. It was like the rest one
takes after a prodigious journey. The distance traversed since the
hat-box had been wrenched open was made as clear as though the last
object in the box had been yet another lamp shedding an intenser ray.
Singleton had brought out something rolled in a scarf of Roman silk.
The two objects inside were a small box of cartridges and a revolver. It
was then that Lady McIntyre, rising and steadying herself by the chair,
showed how far she had come in these last moments. "At all events, you
can't say you've found any bombs!"
"No! oh, no!" If anything could minimize the implications of tragedy
evoked by the sight of a revolver among the personal possessions of a
lady in England, it would be the even pleasantness of Mr. Singleton's
voice. "Nothing of _that_ sort."
Singleton was busy putting away a medley of things into the attache
case, while Grindley was churning up the contents of the drawers in the
American wardrobe trunk with the energy that seemed so nearly passive
and was so uncannily effectual. The great trunk held no papers and only
the lesser trinkets. But the store of purple and fine linen! Lace and
lawn, and cobweb silk, dribbled from half-open drawers. Brocade and
cloth, chiffon and velvet, swung out to view on adjustable supports. And
all that brave show the unappreciative Grindley dismissed with a single
word, "Nothing," and back he went to La Motte's Dictionary.
Singleton picked up the jewels that had come out of the hat-box and held
the cases out to Lady McIntyre.
She seemed, as she stood there steadying herself by the chair back, to
have gone momentarily blind. Singleton suggested she should take care of
the jewels.
"No; oh, no!" she shrank back, and then the poor soul broke into
weeping. "Under _William's_ roof!"
Singleton slipped the jewels into the brown suit-case and led the way
to the door. Grindley stood with La Motte open in the hollow of his arm.
Now and then he made a note on a piece of paper, laid on the open page.
They waited for Lady McIntyre to master her tears.
"What are you meaning to do?" she demanded.
Singleton didn't hesitate an instant. The lady would be shown every
consideration. Out of respect to Sir William.
"I suppose," said Lady McIntyre, with unexpected shrewdness, "it's his
duty to tell me that." She turned from Napier to the man who stood there
with that awful "body of conviction" in the brown suit-case.
"It will be terrible to have her here--terrible. But all the same you
shall not take her to London to-night."
"I am afraid those are our instructions," Singleton answered
deferentially.
"Instructions!" she echoed. "Sir William issues the instructions here.
You cannot take her away till he comes home. Mr. Napier,"--she clutched
at his arm--"will you ring up Sir William?"
On the other side of the threshold Grindley paused an instant and looked
into the room again. Reluctantly he shut La Motte, and went back for his
hat and stick.
"Oh, come away and shut the door!" wailed Lady McIntyre, casting a look
of horror about the raided room. A few paces down the hall she loosed
her hold on Napier and walked in front of the three men. Even before she
got to her own room, she put out her hand like a blind person feeling
for the door. She seemed to fall against it. It opened and hid the
little figure from their sight.
Napier followed guiltily behind the brown case, glancing in at open
doors, listening over the banister.
Nan! His heart suddenly stood still. There was the cap of Mercury on the
chest in an angle of the lower hall.
"What is it?" asked the observant Singleton.
"She has--they have come back!" said Napier.
"Oh, no." He went on with the same light, swinging gait.
If Singleton was not, certainly the noiseless brown presence at Napier's
side could not fail to be aware of the afternoon letters on a table in
the hall below. The uppermost in one pile bore the American stamp. That
would be addressed Miss Anne Ellis.
An undefined dread which had lurked in the dark of Napier's mind,
masking itself as dislike of the man Singleton, betrayed more than a
hint of its presence in an anxious speculation as to whether these men,
licensed to break all laws of human dealing, ought to be left alone a
moment in company with letters and telegrams, and God knew what, down
there on the hall table.
"We'll go into Sir William's room and telephone him," Napier suggested.
Singleton looked at his watch.
"He's due here in about a quarter of an hour. Meanwhile, we'd better
take these in out of the wet."
Napier could have sworn Singleton was studying the top letter on Miss
Ellis's pile. The only ones he touched were Greta's. All the same,
Napier had to put pressure on himself to avoid picking up Nan's letters
and secreting them in his own pocket. He seriously considered the
possibility of going out and heading off her return. He fixed an
inimical eye on Grindley--Grindley, wandering about taking his bearings,
La Motte still open on his arm. Now he was at the door, looking out--not
for Sir William at all, as it seemed to Napier's mounting uneasiness. He
was standing there looking out for Miss von Schwarzenberg's "ever
loving" friend. Her "confederate," he might be capable of thinking.
Napier struggled with a vivid prevision of Nan coming back to find that
ambiguous figure--Grindley--at the door. And when she knew what he stood
there for, wouldn't she by every look and motion proclaim her share in
the Schwarzenberg's fate?
Napier returned hastily to the man at the table.
"You have," Napier suggested, "some idea, perhaps, when Miss von
Schwarzenberg is likely to be here?"
In the instant of Singleton's pause to enter a note in that little book
of his, footsteps sounded on the gravel. Steps so quick and light, whose
could they be but--Napier stood braced to meet the misery of this
"coming back." To see her for the first time after that fleeting rapture
among the rocks--to see her like this! He turned his head. Grindley put
out a slow hand. "I'll take it," he said to a telegraph boy who stood
there.
God!--the relief!
"You were saying, oh, yes, _When_." Singleton pocketed his note-book.
"If nothing is altered, she'll be back with the others in an hour or so.
Say, a little after six."
"From Sir William McIntyre's point of view mightn't it be better
to--a--detach Miss von Schwarzenberg from the rest of the party? To get
some of what can't fail to be--a very disagreeable business over
without--a--"
Singleton eyed him.
"Not a bad suggestion." He pulled out a time-table. "What do you say,
Grindley, to doing without another night in that beast of an inn?"
Grindley was at his elbow, holding the orange-brown envelope,
superscription uppermost. "_Schwarzenberg_," all three read. Singleton
dropped his time-table and laid hold of the envelope.
"No, you'd tear it." Grindley's thick soft thumb was already gently
inserted under the flap. He persuaded it. He put the envelope in his
side pocket and opened the paper slip. As the two secret-service men
closed together to read the message, Napier made a movement for which he
derided himself, an instinctive drawing out of range, as though the
telegram were the private property of these men.
Singleton dropped his end of the paper with an impatient, "Just exactly
as interesting as usual." He gathered Miss Greta's letters in a pile and
opened the brown case to receive them. The case was now so full that, in
order to include the dictionary abandoned for the moment by Grindley,
Singleton opened the fat volume in the middle, and spatchcocked it face
down on the journal and the jewel boxes. Even so, the case refused to
shut. Singleton turned La Motte out.
"What's the good of it!"
"M'm." The sound Grindley made reminded one of a child mouthing a sweet.
But his vacant eyes never left the telegram.
"You haven't told me,"--with difficulty Napier controlled his
impatience--"I gather"--he went on--"that you know where to lay your
hand on Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
"Tea telephoned for by Mr. Grant, Golden Lion, Newton Hackett,"
Singleton answered, still readjusting the contents of the case.
"Shall I see if I can get her on the telephone?"
Singleton hesitated. Over his shoulder he looked round at Napier with
the faintest possible trace of a smile.
"Just as you like."
"Yes, it's I, Gavan Napier. Speaking from Lamborough."
She was surprised, greatly, you'd say pleasantly, surprised. Had Napier
not stopped her, she would have been welcoming, in spite of the fact
conveyed by that subtle inflection which tells the experienced ear that
the speaker at the other end of the wire is not alone.
"Don't use names," Napier warned. "Could you get away from your party
and return here at once?"
"What's happened?" the voice came sharply back.
"You might say Lady McIntyre wants you. She isn't ill. And she would
specially like the party not to be broken up. The motor can go back for
the others. One moment! Could you--use your influence to prevent
_anybody_ coming with you? Any one at all?"
After a second's pause the voice came pleasantly:
"The others have begun tea already. _Famished._ But I don't mind waiting
to have mine with ... perhaps with you! Good-by, dear--"
Napier nearly dropped the receiver.
"--_dear_ Lady McIntyre."
Before he rang off, he stepped back as far as the cord on the receiver
allowed him to go. To the very threshold of the telephone room. He had
suddenly remembered Nan's letters. Had they dared--?
He could see the two quite plainly, Grindley with a glass at his eye,
studying the telegram, with Greta's dictionary between them. The message
was in French, then. A sharp pricking of curiosity brought Napier back
into the hall.
Grindley folded Miss Greta's telegram, returned it to its envelope, and
stuck down the flap. Then he laid it, address uppermost, in the empty
space between Lady McIntyre's letters and those of Miss Ellis, picked up
the brown case, and passed Singleton, with a murmured, "Back in time."
"Perishing for a pipe," was his companion's comment to Napier, as the
stout figure turned off among the shrubberies. "Great person, Grindley!"
Singleton took a letter off Miss Ellis's pile.
"How much is _she_--the American--in this, should you say?"
"You're too good at your job," retorted Napier, "to imagine she's within
a thousand miles of being 'in it.'"
"Oh, you think that?"
His look drew a sudden stricture round Napier's heart.