"No," said Terry.
"A fact, I believe. Watching your father brought it to my mind. He's very agile."
"Well, you scared him. He's frightened to death of Adela."
"I don't blame him. If the Cardinals knew what fear is, I should be frightened of her myself. As hard an egg as ever stepped out of the saucepan."
"You ought to see her doing her imitation of an angry headmistress."
"Well worth watching, I imagine. Odd how different sisters can be. I can't imagine you scaring anyone. Yours is a beautiful nature: kind, sweet, gentle, dovelike, the very type of nature that one wants to have around the house. Will you marry me?"
"No."
"I think you're wrong. One of these days, when we are walking down the aisle together, with the choir singing 'The Voice That Breathed o'er Eden,' I shall remind you of this. 'Aha!' I shall say. 'Who said she wouldn't marry me?' That'll make you look silly."
They caught Lord Shortlands up at the drawing-room door, and soothed him into something resembling calm. The gong, they pointed out, is the acid test as to whether you are in time for or late for dinner, and the gong had not yet sounded.
So firmly based on reason was their argument that the fifth earl was able to enter the room with almost a swagger. It subsided a little as he saw that they were the last arrivals, but he still maintained a fairly firm front.
"Hullo, hullo," he said. "Dinner's a bit late, isn't it?"
There was no frown on Lady Adela's face. She appeared quite amiable.
"Yes," she said. "I told Spink to put it back ten minutes. We're waiting for Mr. Rossiter."
At the moment of his entry Lord Shortlands had paused at an occasional table and picked up a china ornament, in order to fortify his courage by fiddling with it. At these words, it slipped from his grasp, crashing to ruin on the parquet floor.
"Rossiter!"
"Yes. I wish you wouldn't break things, Father."
At another moment Lord Shortlands would have wilted at the displeasure in his daughter's voice, and would probably have thrown together some hasty story about somebody having joggled his arm. But now he had no thought for such minor matters.
"Rossiter?" he cried. "How do you mean Rossiter?"
"Apparently Mr. Rossiter has been staying at the inn in the village for the fishing. Quite a coincidence that he should have been there just when Spink was trying to find him. Spink happened to go to the inn this evening, and met him. Of course I asked him to come to the castle."
The door opened, and Mervyn Spink appeared. His eye, as it rested upon Lord Shortlands, had in it a lurking gleam.
"Mr. Rossiter," he announced.
Stanwood Cobbold walked into the room, tripping over a rug, as was his habit when he entered rooms.
13
"It's no good looking to me for guidance, my dear Shorty," said Mike. "I'm sunk."
He spoke in response to a certain wild appeal in the other's eye, which he had just caught. Dinner was over, and a council of three had met in Lord Shortlands' study to discuss the latest development. Its president was pacing the floor with his hands behind his back, occasionally removing them in order to gesticulate in a rather frenzied manner. Mike and Terry, the remaining delegates to the conference, were seated. The dog Whiskers was present, but took no part in the proceedings. He was trying to locate a flea which had been causing him some annoyance.
"Sunk," Mike repeated. "I am stunned, bewildered and at a loss. Bouleverse, if you would like a little French."
Lord Shortlands groaned and flung his arms up like a despairing semaphore. He was thinking of Mervyn Spink's face as he had seen it during the recent meal. For the most part, as befitted a butler performing his official duties, it had been impassive; but once, on Lady Adela asking Mr. Rossiter if he remembered having given her head of staff his stamp album and Mr. Rossiter who seemed a nervous young man, inclined to start violently and try to swallow his uvula when spoken to, upsetting his glass and replying "Oh, sure," it had softened into a quick smile. And hi the gesture with which the fellow had offered him the potatoes there had been something virtually tantamount to a dig in the ribs. It had gone through Lord Shortlands like a knife through butter.
"No," said Mike, proceeding, "it's no use my trying to pretend that I am hep. I am not hep. What is all this Rossiter stuff?"
Terry clicked her tongue impatiently, like a worried schoolmistress with a child of slow intelligence.
"Weren't you listening when Adela said that to Stanwood at dinner?"
"Said what?"
"About the album."
"I'm sorry. I missed it."
"Well, Spink is pretending that the album was given him by the son of some Americans named Rossiter who took the castle last summer—"
"The viper!" interpolated Lord Shortlands.
"—and somehow, I can't imagine how, he has got Stanwood to say he is Mr. Rossiter. And when Adela asked him if had given Spink the album, he said he had. Now do you see?"
Mike whistled. Lord Shortlands, whose nervous system had been greatly impaired by the night's happenings, asked him not to whistle, and Mike said that he would endeavour not to do so in future but that this particular whistle had been forced from him by the intense stickiness of the situation.
"I should say I do see," he said. "Has Spink got the stamp, then?"
"No, not yet. He came to the drawing room after dinner and asked for it, but Adela said that it would be much better for her to keep it till Desborough was well enough to go to London. She said he would be able to get a better price than Spink could, because he knows the right people to go to."
"Very shrewd."
"Spink argued a bit, but Adela squashed him."
"Good for her. Well, this is fine. This gives us a respite."
Lord Shortlands was not to be comforted.
"What's the good of a respite? What the dickens does it matter if the fellow gets the thing tonight or the day after tomorrow?"
"The delay, my dear Shorty, is of the utmost importance. It means everything. I have a plan."
"He has a plan," said Terry.
"I have a plan," said Mike. "No need to be surprised. You know my lightning brain. In the interval which elapses before Desborough Topping's lumbago slackens its grip and he is able to travel, we will act. Boys and girls, we are going to pinch this stamp."
"What!"
"Pinch it," said Mike firmly. "Swipe it. Obtain possession of it by strong-arm tactics. Up against this dark and subtle butler, we cannot afford to be too nice in our methods. He has raised the banner with the strange device 'Anything goes.' Let that slogan be ours."
Terry was a girl who believed in giving praise where praise was due, even though there was the risk that such praise might increase the tendency of its recipient to get above himself.
"What a splendid idea. How nice it is to come across someone with a really criminal mind. I suppose this is one of those hidden depths of yours that you were speaking of?"
"That's right. I'm full of them."
Lord Shortlands' conscience appeared to be less elastic than his daughter's. Where she had applauded, he fingered the chin dubiously.
"But I can't go about pinching things."
"Why not?" ' "Well, dash it."
"Oh, Shorty."
"No, he's quite right," said Mike. "I see what he means. He shrinks from smirching the old escutcheon, and I honor him for his scruples. But have no qualms, my dear Shorty. In pinching this stamp you will simply be restoring it to its rightful owner. That album belongs to Terry."
Terry shook her head.
"Well meant, but no good. Shorty knows I haven't collected stamps since I was in the schoolroom."