by Molly Thynne
“What is it? Fire?” he demanded.
Stuart reassured him, and described Miss Adderley’s vision.
“If it hadn’t been for that business of the light, I should have been inclined to think that she had imagined the whole thing,” he finished.
Constantine nodded.
“Thank God it isn’t fire,” he exclaimed. “It’s a thing I’m always afraid of in an old house like this. But this is delicious! A masked man in a snow-bound hotel! You realize he could hardly have come from outside on a night like this?”
“The question is, how are we to get hold of the landlord?” said Stuart, who was beginning to feel chilly, and did not quite share his companion’s obvious enjoyment of the situation.
“You might knock up Soames, to begin with. His knowledge of hotels and their ways is positively uncanny. His is the first door on the right at the top of the flight of steps at the end of this passage. If the man slipped round this way he must have passed both our rooms.”
Stuart routed out Soames, who proved sleepy, but helpful.
“The servants’ quarters are all at the back there,” he informed them. “I heard them moving about after I got to bed. You cut round and up the stairs at your end, and I’ll go this way and try to get old Girling on the way. We’re bound to meet somewhere, and, if the beggar is lurking in the back regions, we ought to head him off. But you may bet he’s gone to earth by now. I like your little poker,” he added appreciatively.
“That’s really Miss Adderley’s contribution. Will you keep an eye on the stairs here, sir?” said Stuart, turning to Constantine.
“I will look after this end to the best of my ability,” he assured them, with a twinkle in his eye that brought the absurdity of the whole expedition home to Stuart. “Though I must warn you that my fighting days are over.”
Soames was as good as his word, and, when Stuart eventually ran him to earth in what seemed a labyrinth of narrow passages, all equipped with unexpected little steps designed to trip up the unwary, he was already in conversation with Girling, who showed himself frankly sceptical about the whole occurrence.
“In all the years I’ve been ’ere,” he was saying, “there’s never been so much as a pin stolen, and if there’s any one up to mischief, it isn’t any of my little lot, that I can vouch for. Those that haven’t been with me for years are from the village, folks as I’ve known all their lives. And I’d like to see the burglar as’d come from outside on a night like this.”
He was sufficiently impressed, however, to rouse the boots, and, together, the four men made the round of the whole house, to find that not only was everything undisturbed, but that all the windows and doors were as securely fastened as they had been when the household retired to bed.
It was not until they had worked their way round to the lounge, and were hailed by Constantine from the top of the first flight of stairs, that Stuart, to his relief, was able in some degree to substantiate his story.
Constantine was standing on the stairs, by a small window close to the landing.
“I haven’t seen a soul,” he informed them, “but this looks as if it might have some bearing on the matter.”
He pointed to the carpet immediately under the window. A couple of handfuls of snow, evidently dislodged from the outside sill of the window, and now fast dissolving into a pool of water, were lying there, and, through the window, the bottom of which was open some ten inches, the flakes were drifting in and settling in a thin layer on the inside sill.
“Did you find that there window open, sir?” asked Girling. “I latched it myself last thing.”
“It was just as you see it,” answered Constantine. “I only got here a minute ago.”
Girling threw open the window and peered out into the darkness, and Stuart, looking over his shoulder, discovered that it gave on to a balcony, though how far this extended he could not see.
Girling, who had been leaning far out of the window, heaved himself back on to the staircase. His head and shoulders were thickly powdered with snow.
“Here, you, Joe,” he said. “Hop down to the office and fetch that torch of mine. You know where to find it.
“Can’t see a thing out there,” he went on. “But even if the chap did get in that way, which I find it hard to believe, he wouldn’t leave no trace. This snow’d cover anything in five minutes.”
“How far does that balcony run?” asked Stuart.
“Right past the two bedrooms on that side. But it’s a tidy way up from the ground, and I wouldn’t care to do it, even with a ladder, in weather like this.”
“Who is occupying those rooms?” asked Constantine.
“The American lady comes first, then that Mrs. Orkney Cloude that arrived this evening. They’re big rooms; that’s why there are only two on this floor to three on the floor above. The American lady would be just under you, sir. You didn’t hear anything, I. suppose?”
“Nothing,” answered Constantine. “But I was fast asleep when Mr. Stuart knocked at my door. All the same, I think it might be as well to see tint she’s all right, though I don’t fancy she’s been disturbed.”
Girling disappeared round the angle of the passage, and they heard him knock softly at Mrs. van Dolen’s door. Stuart looked at Constantine.
“You’re thinking of the emeralds,” he said. “But surely she couldn’t be such a fool as to have them here.”
“If all I’ve heard of the lady is true,” answered the old man, “she’s certain to have them with her. And you may be pretty certain that Girling doesn’t boast a safe, so she won’t have left them with him. But, if she was the objective, I fancy she’s escaped this time. Whoever opened that window was getting out, not in.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Stuart, staring at him.
For answer Constantine shut down the window.
“If you wait a moment I’ll show you,” he said. “But you can see for yourself that there isn’t a sign of damp on the carpet, except where the snow has fallen from the window ledge. No human being could have got in from outside without leaving a wet trail behind him. And another thing. I’ll admit it never does to generalize, but you must see that the cat burglar theory hardly holds water. By to-morrow we shall be as completely isolated as the original Noah’s Ark on its waste of waters. Even if we accept the amazing theory that a burglar, knowing all about Mrs. van Dolen’s emeralds, happened to find himself in the village tonight, we have still to explain how he proposed to get away with his booty.”
“He might have followed her from London, meaning to have a try for the girdle at Redsands,” suggested Stuart, “and then have found himself hung up by the snow here.”
“In which case he’s in this hotel and this is an inside job,” retorted Constantine. “He’s far safer here than lodging at some cottage in the village. If I know anything of these small country places, no stranger is likely to escape notice for more than twelve hours.”
He bent forward and threw the window open. The snow had had time to collect once more on the outside ledge of the sash, and as he raised it a goodish lump detached itself and fell on the carpet at his feet.
“It isn’t necessary to come in through the window to bring the snow with you,” he pointed. “Miss Adderley must have disturbed our friend in the nick of time. Why he was such a fool as to show himself, remains to be seen.”
He was interrupted by the reappearance of Girling.
“Mrs. van Dolen hasn’t heard anything,” he said. “And I’ve had a look at her window. It’s one of those French ones, with an ordinary catch and no shutters. Easy enough to force, if any one wanted to; but it hasn’t been touched, and the snow outside doesn’t show anything. I went out to look, but that’s no proof on a night like this.”
He turned sharply at a sound on the stairs, but it was only Joe returning with the torch.
“It’s no good bothering about the balcony. We shan’t get anything there. You get a coat on, Joe, and take the torch with you. And t
he key of the barn. Go right round the outside and keep a sharp look-out to see if there’s any sign of any one’s having got in anywhere. And have a peep into the barn and see if there’s a ladder missing. If you don’t want to go alone, wake Hawkins. He’ll go with you.”
“I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’,” stated Joe stolidly, as he plodded heavily down the stairs. “The snow’s what I minds.”
“And he’ll get it, poor chap,” remarked Girling. “Well, he’s a long sight younger than I am, and it won’t hurt him.”
“I’m afraid he’s wasting his time,” said Constantine, and proceeded to propound his theory.
As he did so the hard-bitten lines on Girling’s face deepened.
“I don’t like it, sit,” he said frankly, when Constantine had finished. “I don’t like it at all. If I’d known of the quantity of jewellery that there lady’s got with her, I’d have made it very plain in the beginning that I wouldn’t hold myself responsible for anything that might happen. We haven’t got no safe here, never had any call to have one, and what valuables I’ve got goes in a box under my bed. It fair took my breath away when she told me just now what she’s got in that room there. It isn’t right nor fair to travel with all that stuff, and I told her so straight. All she says is, that she’s never been robbed yet.”
“Well, I shouldn’t brood over it. You may be sure it’s all insured, and, even if it wasn’t, she can afford to lose it. Don’t waste your anxiety on a silly woman,” rejoined Constantine consolingly.
“And now you tell me that I’m harbouring a thief in my house,” went on Girling. “And, what with the chauffeurs and such these gentry have brought with them, I’m willing enough to believe you. I’m ready to answer for every man and woman on my own staff, but what do I know about the lot we’ve got here to-night? I tell you, sir, I’ll be glad to see the back of that American lady, and that’s the truth.”
“Did she happen to tell you whether she is in the habit of locking her door at night?” asked Soames, who, Stuart realized, had been unwontedly silent since the discovery of the open window.
Girling nodded.
“Always locks her door, she says, and I’m glad of it. They’re old, heavy doors, with good locks, and they’d take some getting through.”
“Whereas the windows are modern, flimsy contrivances with the usual slip-up catch, I suppose?” put in Constantine.
Girling stared at him.
“That’s right, sir. Meaning, I suppose, that if any one wanted to get into one of those rooms, he’d choose the window rather than the door. Likely you’re right.”
He sighed heavily.
“Looks as if there’s nothing for it but to go to bed,” he said. “It’s not likely he’ll try again to-night, and we’ve done the best we can. I’ll pass the word to Tom Bates, the constable, to-morrow, and, if there’s any strangers in the village, he’ll get on to them quick enough. I don’t see what more we can do.”
He took himself off, a badly worried man, while the others followed more slowly up the stairs to their own floor.
“I wish the fellow had got on to the balcony,” said Soames. “With that amount of snow on his shoes we could have followed his tracks on this carpet anyway. As it is, who knows where he may have gone to earth! I suppose that Miss Adderley didn’t give any sort of description of him?”
Stuart smiled involuntarily at the mention of her name.
“The fact that he wore a mask was enough for her,” he answered. “Besides, she only saw him for a second.”
“That’s the most puzzling element in the whole business,” remarked Constantine reflectively. “Why, when the man had got the window open and was, we suppose, about to get out, should he have gone out of his way to go on to the landing and show himself in the passage? He must, presumably, have heard Miss Adderley moving while he was in the act of opening the window. The last thing one would expect him to do would be to go in the direction of the sound he had heard.”
“You’re sure she didn’t say whether he was short or tall?” pursued Soames, obviously following up a train of thought of his own.
“I can ask her if you like, but I’m sure she was incapable of noticing anything, once she had seen that mask,” answered Stuart.
“You’ve got an idea, eh?”
The question came sharply from Constantine, whose keen eyes were on Soames’s shrewd if rather heavy face. They had reached their own landing and had halted to finish their conversation.
Soames hesitated.
“I can’t say that,” he said slowly, “but one rather funny thing happened when I was making the round of the passages after I had knocked up Girling. If Miss Adderley had said that her man was tall I’d have been inclined to think I knew who he was, only the idea seems so preposterous.”
“Out with it, man,” urged Constantine impatiently.
“Well, Girling was getting into some clothes and said he’d follow on, so I went ahead and worked my way round to the floor under this. I suppose I must have made a bit more noise than I thought, because a door opened just as I was passing it and a chap stuck his head out. It was that tall fellow, Lord Romsey’s son. He asked if anything was the matter, and I told him. He said he’d get some clothes on and join us, but he’s been a precious long time about it.”
As though in answer to the criticism a voice hailed them softly from the landing below. Stuart swung round. A tall figure, clad in a dressing-gown, below which showed a pair of pyjama trousers, was standing looking up at them.
“Talk of the devil,” murmured Soames.
“Is everything all right up there?” came softly from below.
Constantine answered him.
“Perfectly,” he said. “We’ve drawn a blank and we’re on our way to bed.”
“Right. Let me know if you need me.”
The figure disappeared. Soames grunted.
“What is his name, anyway?” he asked morosely.
“Officially, he’s the Honourable Geoffrey Ford,” Constantine informed him, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “Why this disapproval? He really is a very excellent young man.”
“He may be the President of the Y.M.C.A. for all I care,” was Soames’s answer. “But I’d give something to know why, when he says he’s going to dress, he goes and gets into pyjamas and vice versa.”
Constantine stared at him, his bushy eyebrows raised in interrogation.
“When he opened his door,” went on Soames doggedly, “he took jolly good care not to open it too wide, but I saw him, all the same. He’d got a dressing-gown on all right, but he was wearing his dress trousers underneath it. If he’d been to bed at all, I’ll eat my hat.”
A sudden recollection came to Stuart.
“Where is his room?” he asked sharply.
“At the top of the little flight of steps opposite the room next to Mrs. van Dolen’s,” answered Soames.
Stuart relapsed into silence. The door next to Mrs. van Dolen’s was the one that had closed so softly, immediately after the conversation he had overheard on his way up to bed that night. And the landlord had said that Mrs. Orkney Cloude was sleeping there. He looked up to meet Constantine’s quizzical gaze.
“So some one else has got an idea,” remarked the old man softly. “We are getting on. Who is it this time?”
But Stuart was not to be drawn. He grinned and shook his head.
“Nothing doing,” he said. “I must go and reassure my old ladies; then I’m going to bed, and all the burglars in the world won’t get me out of it. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” called Constantine after him. “We shall meet in the morning.”
“And you’ll pick my brains as neatly as you’ve picked those of everybody else in this house, and I’m blessed if I shall be able to help myself,” reflected Stuart, as he knocked gently at Miss Adderley’s door.
CHAPTER IV
Stuart slept late next morning. So, he gathered, did his companions in adventure, for when he eventually got up, he fo
und them in sole possession of the coffee-room.
Soames greeted him with a grin.
“I don’t know how the cold light of day affects you,” he said, “but I’m beginning to have an uncomfortable feeling that we made fools of ourselves last night. Somehow this masked man business doesn’t seem so convincing at breakfast.”
Stuart nodded.
“I know,” he answered, with an appreciative eye on the dish the waiter had just set down in front of him. “I’ve been feeling all kinds of an ass myself ever since I woke. It wouldn’t be so bad, somehow, if it wasn’t for that beastly little poker.”
Soames choked into his teacup, and, from the fleeting gleam of sheer delight that lit up Constantine’s face, Stuart realized that he had cut quite as comic a figure as he had ruefully suspected.
“All the same,” he protested, “some one was on the prowl. Witness the lights and the window.”
“One of the chauffeurs after the whisky, as likely as not,” scoffed Soames.
“Which he no doubt expected to find on the balcony,” put in Constantine dryly. “No, though I do admit that I find the masked man a little difficult to swallow, I am at a loss to account for the window. If it were not for that walking jeweller’s shop, Mrs. van Dolen, I should dismiss even that as negligible, but the fact remains that that balcony runs across the whole of the front of the house, past her window and those of Mrs. Cloude and the Romseys, all of whom have probably got strings of pearls, even if they are too wise to travel with the bulk of their jewellery. Apart from the emeralds, there would be a good haul for any one from that balcony alone.”
It struck Stuart suddenly that Dr. Constantine appeared to be remarkably well posted as to the whereabouts of his fellow-guests.
“You seem to have been studying the lie of the land, sir,” he said.
Constantine’s eyes twinkled.
“I see suspicion dawning already,” he sighed. “But I can assure you, I haven’t been planning a neat little burglary, and my climbing days are over. The fact is that I had a chat with Girling while I was waiting for my breakfast, and even went so far as to step out of the front door into the snow and have a look at the house. It wasn’t worth risking rheumatism for. Whoever plastered that abominable, jerry-built balcony, with its vile French windows, on to the front of this old house ought to have been slain. I was glad to discover that it had been done before Girling’s time.”