Freddie's sensation, on perceiving him, was one of relief. He had been half afraid it was the bishop. He recognized Ashe as the valet chappie who had helped him to bed on the occasion of his accident. It might be that he had come in a respectful way to make inquiries, but he was not likely to stop long. He nodded and went on reading. And then, glancing up, he perceived Ashe standing beside the bed, fixing him with a piercing stare.
The Honorable Freddie hated piercing stares. One of the reasons why he objected to being left alone with his future father-in-law, Mr. J. Preston Peters, was that Nature had given the millionaire a penetrating pair of eyes, and the stress of business life in New York had developed in him a habit of boring holes in people with them. A young man had to have a stronger nerve and a clearer conscience than the Honorable Freddie to enjoy a tete-a-tete with Mr. Peters.
Though he accepted Aline's father as a necessary evil and recognized that his position entitled him to look at people as sharply as he liked, whatever their feelings, he would be hanged if he was going to extend this privilege to Mr. Peters' valet. This man standing beside him was giving him a look that seemed to his sensitive imagination to have been fired red-hot from a gun; and this annoyed and exasperated Freddie.
"What do you want?" he said querulously. "What are you staring at me like that for?"
Ashe sat down, leaned his elbows on the bed, and applied the look again from a lower elevation.
"Ah!" he said.
Whatever may have been Ashe's defects, so far as the handling of the inductive-reasoning side of Gridley Quayle's character was concerned, there was one scene in each of his stories in which he never failed. That was the scene in the last chapter where Quayle, confronting his quarry, unmasked him. Quayle might have floundered in the earlier part of the story, but in his big scene he was exactly right. He was curt, crisp and mercilessly compelling.
Ashe, rehearsing this interview in the passage before his entry, had decided that he could hardly do better than model himself on the detective. So he began to be curt, crisp and mercilessly compelling to Freddie; and after the first few sentences he had that youth gasping for air.
"I will tell you," he said. "If you can spare me a few moments of your valuable time I will put the facts before you. Yes; press that bell if you wish—and I will put them before witnesses. Lord Emsworth will no doubt be pleased to learn that his son, whom he trusted, is a thief!"
Freddie's hand fell limply. The bell remained un-touched. His mouth opened to its fullest extent. In the midst of his panic he had a curious feeling that he had heard or read that last sentence somewhere before. Then he remembered. Those very words occurred in Gridley Quayle, Investigator—The Adventure of the Blue Ruby.
"What—what do you mean?" he stammered.
"I will tell you what I mean. On Saturday night a valuable scarab was stolen from Lord Emsworth's private museum. The case was put into my hands——"
"Great Scott! Are you a detective?"
"Ah!" said Ashe.
Life, as many a worthy writer has pointed out, is full of ironies. It seemed to Freddie that here was a supreme example of this fact. All these years he had wanted to meet a detective; and now that his wish had been gratified the detective was detecting him!
"The case," continued Ashe severely, "was placed in my hands. I investigated it. I discovered that you were in urgent and immediate need of money."
"How on earth did you do that?"
"Ah!" said Ashe. "I further discovered that you were in communication with an individual named Jones."
"Good Lord! How?"
Ashe smiled quietly.
"Yesterday I had a talk with this man Jones, who is staying in Market Blandings. Why is he staying in Market Blandings? Because he had a reason for keeping in touch with you; because you were about to transfer to his care something you could get possession of, but which only he could dispose of—the scarab."
The Honorable Freddie was beyond speech. He made no comment on this statement. Ashe continued:
"I interviewed this man Jones. I said to him: 'I am in the Honorable Frederick Threepwood's confidence. I know everything. Have you any instructions for me?' He replied: 'What do you know?' I answered: 'I know that the Honorable Frederick Threepwood has something he wishes to hand to you, but which he has been unable to hand to you owing to having had an accident and being confined to his room.' He then told me to tell you to let him have the scarab by messenger."
Freddie pulled himself together with an effort. He was in sore straits, but he saw one last chance. His researches in detective fiction had given him the knowledge that detectives occasionally relaxed their austerity when dealing with a deserving case. Even Gridley Quayle could sometimes be softened by a hard-luck story. Freddie could recall half a dozen times when a detected criminal had been spared by him because he had done it all from the best motives. He determined to throw himself on Ashe's mercy.
"I say, you know," he said ingratiatingly, "I think it's bally marvelous the way you've deduced everything, and so on."
"Well?"
"But I believe you would chuck it if you heard my side of the case."
"I know your side of the case. You think you are being blackmailed by a Miss Valentine for some letters you once wrote her. You are not. Miss Valentine has destroyed the letters. She told the man Jones so when he went to see her in London. He kept your five hundred pounds and is trying to get another thousand out of you under false pretenses."
"What? You can't be right."
"I am always right."
"You must be mistaken."
"I am never mistaken."
"But how do you know?"
"I have my sources of information."
"She isn't going to sue me for breach of promise?"
"She never had any intention of doing so."
The Honorable Freddie sank back on the pillows.
"Good egg!" he said with fervor. He beamed happily. "This," he observed, "is a bit of all right."
For a space relief held him dumb. Then another aspect of the matter struck him, and he sat up again with a jerk.
"I say, you don't mean to say that that rotter Jones was such a rotter as to do a rotten thing like that?"
"I do."
Freddie grew plaintive.
"I trusted that man," he said. "I jolly well trusted him absolutely."
"I know," said Ashe. "There is one born every minute."
"But"—the thing seemed to be filtering slowly into Freddie's intelligence "what I mean to say is, I—I—thought he was such a good chap."
"My short acquaintance with Mr. Jones," said Ashe "leads me to think that he probably is—to himself."
"I won't have anything more to do with him."
"I shouldn't."
"Dash it, I'll tell you what I'll do. The very next time I meet the blighter, I'll cut him dead. I will! The rotter! Five hundred quid he's had off me for nothing! And, if it hadn't been for you, he'd have had another thousand! I'm beginning to think that my old governor wasn't so far wrong when he used to curse me for going around with Jones and the rest of that crowd. He knew a bit, by Gad! Well, I'm through with them. If the governor ever lets me go to London again, I won't have anything to do with them. I'll jolly well cut the whole bunch! And to think that, if it hadn't been for you . . ."
"Never mind that," said Ashe. "Give me the scarab. Where is it?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Restore it to its rightful owner."
"Are you going to give me away to the governor?"
"I am not."
"It strikes me," said Freddie gratefully, "that you are a dashed good sort. You seem to me to have the making of an absolute topper! It's under the mattress. I had it on me when I fell downstairs and I had to shove it in there."