A faint smile came to the girl's lips. "I don't think they will - not after the way you hit them. Oh, it was splendid of you!"
Major Wilbraham blushed under the warmth of her glance of admiration.
"Nothin' at all," he said indistinctly. "All in day's work. Lady being annoyed. Look here, if you take my arm, can you walk? It's been a nasty shock, I know."
"I'm all right now," said the girl. However, she took the proffered arm. She was still rather shaky. She glanced behind her at the house as they emerged through the gate. "I can't understand it," she murmured. "That's clearly an empty house."
"It's empty, right enough," agreed the major, looking up at the shuttered windows and general air of decay.
"And yet it is Whitefriars." She pointed to a half-obliterated name on the gate. "And Whitefriars was the place I was to go."
"Don't worry about anything now," said Wilbraham. "In a minute or two we'll be able to get a taxi. Then we'll drive somewhere and have a cup of coffee."
At the end of the lane they came out into a more frequented street, and by good fortune a taxi had just set down a fare at one of the houses. Wilbraham hailed it, gave an address to the driver and they got in.
"Don't try to talk," he admonished his companion. "Just lie back. You've had a nasty experience."
She smiled at him gratefully.
"By the way - er - my name is Wilbraham."
"Mine is Clegg - Freda Clegg."
Ten minutes later, Freda was sipping hot coffee and looking gratefully across a small table at her rescuer.
"It seems like a dream," she said. "A bad dream." She shuddered. "And only a short while ago I was wishing for something to happen - anything! Oh, I don't like adventures."
"Tell me how it happened."
"Well, to tell you properly I shall have to talk a lot about myself, I'm afraid."
"An excellent subject," said Wilbraham, with a bow.
"I am an orphan. My father - he was a sea captain - died when I was eight. My mother died three years ago. I work in the City. I am with the Vacuum Gas Company - a clerk. One evening last week I found a gentleman waiting to see me when I returned to my lodgings. He was a lawyer, a Mr Reid from Melbourne.
"He was very polite and asked me several questions about my family. He explained that he had known my father many years ago. In fact, he had transacted some legal business for him. Then he told me the object of his visit. 'Miss Clegg,' he said, 'I have reason to suppose that you might benefit as the result of a financial transaction entered into by your father several years before he died.' I was very much surprised, of course.
"'It is unlikely that you would ever have heard anything of the matter,' he explained. 'John Clegg never took the affair seriously, I fancy. However, it has materialized unexpectedly, but I am afraid any claim you might put in would depend on your ownership of certain papers. These papers would be part of your father's estate, and of course it is possible that they have been destroyed as worthless. Have you kept any of your father's papers?'
"I explained that my mother had kept various things of my father's in an old sea chest. I had looked through it cursorily but had discovered nothing of interest.
"'You would hardly be likely to recognize the importance of these documents, perhaps,' he said, smiling.
"Well, I went to the chest, took out the few papers it contained and brought them to him. He looked at them, but said it was impossible to say offhand what might or might not be connected with the matter in question. He would take them away with him and would communicate with me if anything turned up.
"By the last post on Saturday I received a letter from him in which he suggested that I come to his house to discuss the matter. He gave me the address: Whitefriars, Friars Lane, Hampstead. I was to be there at a quarter to eleven this morning.
"I was a little late finding the place. I hurried through the gate and up towards the house, when suddenly those two dreadful men sprang at me from the bushes. I hadn't time to cry out. One man put his hand over my mouth. I wrenched my head free and screamed for help. Luckily you heard me. If it hadn't been for you -" She stopped. Her looks were more eloquent than further words.
"Very glad I happened to be on the spot. By Gad, I'd like to get hold of those two brutes. You'd never seen them before, I suppose?"
She shook her head. "What do you think it means?"
"Difficult to say. But one thing seems pretty simple. There's something someone wants among your father's papers. This man Reid told you a cock-and-bull story as to get the opportunity of looking through the papers. Evidently what he wanted wasn't there."
"Oh!" said Freda. "I wonder. When I got home on Saturday I thought my things had been tampered with. To tell you the truth, I suspected my landlady of having pried about in my room out of curiosity. But now -"
"Depend upon it, that's it. Someone gained admission to your room and searched it, without finding what he was after. He suspected that you knew the value of this paper, whatever it was, and that you carried it about on your person. So he planned this ambush. If you had had it with you, it would have been taken from you. If not, you would have been held prisoner while they tried to make you tell where it was hidden."
"But what can it possibly be?" cried Freda.
"I don't know. But it must be something pretty good for him to go to this length."
"It doesn't seem possible."
"Oh, I don't know. Your father was a sailor. He went to out-of-the-way places. He might have come across something the value of which he never knew."
"Do you really think so?" A pink flush of excitement showed in the girl's pale cheeks.
"I do indeed. The question is, what shall we do next? You don't want to go to the police, I suppose?"
"Oh, no, please."
"I'm glad you say that. I don't see what good the police could do, and it would only mean unpleasantness for you. Now I suggest that you allow me to give you lunch somewhere and that I then accompany you back to your lodgings, so as to be sure you reach them safely. And then, we might have a look for the paper. Because, you know, it must be somewhere."
"Father may have destroyed it himself."
"He may, of course, but the other side evidently doesn't think so, and that looks hopeful for us."
"What do you think it can be? Hidden treasure?"
"By Jove, it might be!" exclaimed Major Wilbraham, all the boy in him rising joyfully to the suggestion.
"But now, Miss Clegg, lunch!"
They had a pleasant meal together. Wilbraham told Freda all about his life in East Africa. He described elephant hunts, and the girl was thrilled. When they had finished, he insisted on taking her home in a taxi.
Her lodgings were near Notting Hill Gate. On arriving there, Freda had a brief conversation with her landlady.
She returned to Wilbraham and took him up to the second floor, where she had a tiny bedroom and sitting room.
"It's exactly as we thought," she said. "A man came on Saturday morning to see about laying a new electric cable; he told her there was a fault in the wiring in my room. He was there some time."
"Show me this chest of your father's," said Wilbraham.
Freda showed him a brass-bound box. "You see," she said, raising the lid, "It's empty."
The soldier nodded thoughtfully. "And there are no papers anywhere else?"
"I'm sure there aren't. Mother kept everything in here."
Wilbraham examined the inside of the chest. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. "Here's a slit in the lining." Carefully he inserted his hand, feeling about. A slight crackle rewarded him. "Something's slipped down behind."
In another minute he had drawn out his find. A piece of dirty paper folded several times. He smoothed it out on the table; Freda was looking over his shoulder. She uttered an exclamation of disappointment.