"It was in the schoolroom that you collected this one. I was on the point of mentioning it when we were getting out of the car the day I arrived, only Shorty was so sure the thing was his that I had hadn't the heart to. Throw your mind back. A rainy afternoon eight years ago. You were sitting at the schoolroom table, covered with glue, poring over your childish collection. I entered and said 'Hello, looking at your stamps?' You came clean. Yes, you said, you were looking at your stamps. 'You don't seem to have many,' I said. 'Would you like mine?', adding that I had recently been given an album full of the dam' things as a birthday present by an uncle who wasn't abreast of affairs and didn't know that it was considered bad form at the dear old school to collect stamps. A pastime only fit for kids."
"Oh, golly. Yes, I remember now."
"I thought you would. So I wrote for it and presented it to you."
"Little knowing that it was a gold mine."
"It would have made no difference if I had known. We Cardinals are like that. Lavish to those we love. You can imagine what excellent husbands we make."
"Well, we Cobbolds have scruples about accepting gifts worth hundreds of pounds from young men who look like Caesar Romero."
"I don't look in the least like Caesar Romero. And I don't see what you can do about it. You took it."
"I can give it back."
"A happy way out of the difficulty would be to turn it over to Shorty."
"That's a wonderful idea. Yes, I'll do that. So you see the stamp does belong to you, Shorty," said Terry. "Thank the gentleman, dear."
"Thanks," said Lord Shortlands dazedly. Things were happening a little too rapidly tonight for his orderly mind, and he had the sense of having been caught up in a cyclone. He was also conscious of a lurking feeling that there was a catch somewhere, if only he could pin it down.
"You are now able," said Mike, pointing out the happy ending, "to tie a can to your spiritual struggles. Your conscience, satisfied that it is being asked to do nothing raw, can spit on its hands and charge ahead without a tremor. Or don't you agree with me?"
"Oh, quite. Oh, certainly. But—"
"Now what?"
"Well, dash it, this stamp's worth fifteen hundred pounds, Desborough says. I can't take fifteen hundred pounds from you, Terry." This was not actually the catch which Lord Shortlands was trying to pin down—that still eluded him—but it was a point that needed to be touched on. "If you could let me have two hundred as a loan—"
"Nonsense, darling. What's mine is yours."
"Well, it's extremely kind of you, my dear. I hardly know what to say."
"Mike's the one you ought to be grateful to."
"I am. His generosity is princely."
"Yes," said Mike. "What an extraordinarily fine fellow this chap Cardinal is turning out to be. But let's stick to business. The proposal before the meeting is that we pinch this stamp before Spink can get his hooks on it. Carried, unanimously, I fancy? Yes, carried unanimously. It only remains, therefore, to decide on the best means to that end. It should not be difficult. A little cunning questioning of Desborough Topping will inform us where Lady Adela is keeping the things. No doubt in the drawer of her escritoire or somewhere. Having ascertained this, we procure a stout chisel and go to it."
"But—"
"Now, don't make difficulties, Shorty darling," said Terry maternally. "You must see that this is the only way. I'll go and question Desborough cunningly."
She went out, and Lord Shortlands continued to exhibit evidence of the cold foot and the sagging spine. Mike looked at him solicitously.
"I still note a faint shadow on your brow, Shorty," he said. "What seems to be the trouble? Not the conscience again?"
Lord Shortlands had found the catch.
"But, my dear fellow, if Adela finds the drawer of her escritoire broken open and the stamp gone, she'll suspect me."
"Well, what do you care? You'll simply laugh at her. 'What are you going to do about it?' you will say, adding or not adding 'Huh?' according to taste. And she will bite her lip in silence."
"Silence?" said Lord Shortlands dubiously.
"She won't have a thing to say. What can she say?"
"H'm," said Lord Shortlands, and so joyless was his manner that Mike felt constrained to pat him on the back.
"Tails up," he urged.
Lord Shortlands' manner continued joyless.
"It's all very well to say 'Tails up.' I don't like it. Apart from anything else, I don't believe I could ever bring myself to break open an escritoire drawer with a chisel. Anybody's escritoire drawer."
"My dear Shorty, is that what's worrying you? I shall attend to that, of course."
"You will?"
"Naturally. It's young man's work."
"Well, I'm very much obliged to you."
"Not at all."
"I wish to goodness Terry would marry you. She'll never get a better husband."
"Keep telling her that. It's exactly what I've always felt. Has she given you any inkling as to what seems to be the difficulty?"
"Not the slightest."
The door opened. Terry had returned. She sat down, and Mike noticed that her manner, which had been one of radiant confidence, was now subdued. Lord Shortlands would have noticed it, too, had he been in better condition tonight for noticing things.
"Well?" said Mike.
"Well?" said Lord Shortlands.
"Well," said Terry, "I saw Desborough."
"Did you find out what you wanted?"
"I found out something I didn't want."
"Less of the mysterious stuff."
Terry sighed.
"I was only trying to break it gently. If you must have it, Desborough suspects Stanwood."
"Suspects him?" cried Lord Shortlands.
"What of?" said Mike.
"Of not being Rossiter."
"But Spink has given him the okay."
"Yes, and that has made Desborough suspect Spink, too. He thinks it's a plot. 'After all,' he said, 'what do we really know of Spink?', and he quoted authorities to show that in nine cases out of ten the butler at a country house turns out to be one of the Black Onion gang or something. I wish he hadn't read so many detective stories."
"But what on earth has made him suspect Stanwood?"
"He took him off after dinner to talk stamps, and of course Stanwood knew nothing about stamps and gave it away in the first minute. The way Desborough has figured it out is that Stanwood and Spink are working together to loot the house. What a pity it is that Stanwood looks so like something out of a crook play. I never saw anything so obviously criminal as his face during dinner."
"So what steps is he planning to take?"
"I don't know. But a step he has taken is to put the stamp in an envelope and lock it up in the safe."
There was a silence.
"In the safe?" said Mike at length.
"Yes."
"Is there a safe?"
"Yes. In the library."
"Of all silly things to have in a house! Well, this, I admit, is a development which I had not foreseen. I shall have to leave you for a while and ponder apart. You will find me in my room, if you want me. Safes, forsooth!" said Mike bitterly, and went out with knitted brow.
It was clear to him that he had here one of those brain-teasers which Sherlock Holmes used to call three-pipe problems, and he made his way to the Blue Room to get his smoking materials.
As he entered, the vast form of Stanwood Cobbold rose from the easy chair.
14
Stanwood was not looking his best. Dinner, with its enforced propinquity to a hostess who had scared the daylights out of him at first sight, and the subsequent tete-a-tete with Desborough Topping had taken their toll. There had been moments in his life when, with representatives of Notre Dame and Minnesota walking about on his face or pressing the more jagged parts of their persons into his stomach, Stanwood Cobbold had experienced a certain discomfort, but nothing in his career to date had ever reduced him to such a ruin of a fine young man as the ordeal which had been thrust upon him tonight. Gazing at him, you would have said that his soul had passed through the furnace, and you would have been perfectly correct. Mike's first act, before asking any questions, was to hurry to the chest of drawers, take out a flask and press it upon his friend.