‘Congratulations,’ said Lister, with a faint sneer. ‘I didn’t think you were such clever fellows. Then you knew beforehand that the raid was coming off?’
Tripp made no reply, though his eyes did not leave Lister’s thin, dark face.
‘But this is dreadful, Inspector!’ broke in Sir Richard Templeton. ‘Can we do anything to help you?’
‘You can, sir.’ Tripp nodded. ‘Do you mind telling me, Sir Richard, how long you’ve been upstairs in this room?’
‘Let me see.’ Templeton brushed a white hand across his forehead. ‘About an hour, I should think. I got rather interested in this new book on Chinese art.’ He pointed to a large quarto volume which lay open on the table. ‘I decided not to go down for supper, as I dined rather late this evening.’
Tripp turned to Adrian Lister. ‘And you, sir? How long have you been here?’
Lister scowled. ‘I don’t quite see what you’re driving at,’ he retorted; ‘but if you want to know, I came upstairs almost immediately in front of you.’ He looked for corroboration to Templeton.
‘You were not in the supper-room when the raid took place?’ asked the detective.
‘I haven’t been near the supper-room at all,’ replied Lister angrily. ‘I’ve been in my own room for the last half-hour or more. Dancing always bores me, and I came up here—well, for the same purpose as Sir Richard.’ He waved towards the bookshelves that lined the walls. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. If any one had come upstairs past your room in the last few minutes would you have heard him?’
‘No; my door was closed. Why?’
‘The point may be important,’ replied Tripp. ‘I have an idea that the person who carried out the raid came upstairs immediately afterwards—and is upstairs now. You’ve heard nothing, Sir Richard?’ Tripp turned suddenly to the barrister.
‘Nothing.’ Templeton was emphatic. He looked towards Adrian Lister. ‘Hadn’t you better go down to Mrs. Prideaux—she’ll be badly upset over this.’
‘I suggest that you go down to her yourself, my dear fellow,’ murmured Lister suavely. ‘You have a soothing way with you. But it isn’t for Lydia to feel upset—it’s for the police. They admit they knew this Lord John show was coming off, yet they were blundering fools enough to let him——’
But Inspector Tripp listened no more. He hurried downstairs to the room on the second floor, where he had previously noticed that the light was burning. Some magazines lay carelessly about, and an arm-chair was drawn up beside the electric fire. Adrian Lister said he had been here for over half an hour.
Had he? . . . Stooping down, Tripp put his fingers quickly on the metal edge of the electric fire. It was too hot only to have been lit a few moments before. And then he noticed a curl of smoke from a cigar which had been carefully set down on a small bronze tray. The grey ash was nearly a couple of inches long. On the face of it, Adrian Lister’s statement appeared to be true. Sir Richard Templeton’s word he naturally took for granted.
Heyward’s men were making a careful search of the bedrooms; and leaving them to their task, Inspector Tripp went downstairs, and saw someone lying on a couch in the hall. This was the man who had made a rush to the window for help. He was dressed to represent Sir Walter Raleigh, or one of the sea-dogs of Elizabethan days, with a pointed beard and face stained a weather-beaten brown. He was still unconscious, though there was no apparent bruise to be found on his skull. ‘Looks to me a small sandbag did this,’ muttered one of the detectives. ‘Knocks you out worse than a club or a knuckle-duster—I’ve had some.’
‘Job for a doctor—and quick,’ said Inspector Heyward, as the man’s head dropped back helplessly. ‘I don’t like this. No doctor among that crowd in there?’ He pointed towards the supper-room.
‘No, sir,’ replied the other; ‘but I believe somebody’s telephoned for an ambulance. The cottage hospital’s quite near.’
‘Concussion, in my opinion,’ said Mrs. Prideaux’s butler portentously, attempting to force some brandy between the man’s lips. ‘There’s nothing we can do, sir. If somebody has telephoned for an ambulance, it shouldn’t be many minutes.’
Tripp turned away. Lord John had been responsible for at least one murder during his brief, inglorious career. Was this to be yet another to put to his account?
‘This way, Tripp!’ said the voice of Heyward behind him. ‘They’ve found Sergeant Burt.’
Inspector Tripp followed his colleague to a small room in a passage behind the musicians’ gallery. The bonds that secured the young sergeant had already been cut, and they were taking the gag from his mouth. Folded neatly over a chair beside him was the black monk’s garment which Lord John had borrowed and which he had returned with thanks.
Detective-Sergeant Burt had little to tell. He had been attacked from the rear, and partially knocked out, recovering only a few minutes before his plight had been discovered.
The police cordon round the house was soon augmented, and orders were given to close in and guard every possible exit. The Superintendent himself arrived ten minutes later, and at once investigations began indoors. The guests’ chauffeurs were herded into a room by themselves. The additional house staff sent down by a London firm of caterers was subjected to a careful scrutiny, while the guests remained under rigid orders in the supper-room, and they too were examined. Lord John was in the house; that was practically certain. Nor was there much doubt that the loot had been hidden, for neither Lord John himself nor his two unknown helpers would have been foolhardy enough to retain the jewels on their person. Apologies for the prolonged delay were offered to the guests, while a special party of searchers, under the keen eye of Inspector Heyward, began to rake every corner of the house. . . .
Meantime, at the cross-roads, a quarter of a mile from the lodge-gates, a man in the uniform of the mobile police stood beside his motor-cycle, the engine gently throbbing. As the motor-ambulance, speeding towards the cottage hospital, swept past him, he mounted his machine and followed. A couple of minutes later he was less than twenty or thirty yards behind; then he gave two long blasts on his horn.
The inert figure lying in the ambulance stirred at the sound and raised his hand. As the youthful nurse bent over him, he moved uneasily and his lips formed some words.
‘Stop,’ he gasped; ‘for God’s sake, stop!’
His breathing thickened, and in alarm the nurse reached for a brandy-flask among her first-aid equipment.
‘Stop,’ whispered the man. ‘Stop—I’m finished!’ He struggled to his elbow, fighting painfully for breath. ‘I’ve something to tell you. Write it down. . . .’
Pushing aside the little window, the alarmed nurse touched the driver on the shoulder, and with a grinding of brakes the ambulance drew up.
The next instant a loud scream had pealed out from the nurse’s lips; for the man in the Elizabethan costume had flung aside the dark blanket and leaped from the stretcher.
‘It’s all right,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
He made for the door, and jumped lightly down to the road. Before the driver had time to descend he had burst through the hedge and was running swiftly across the fields.
He was heading in a diagonal line for the road that went off at a right angle some little way back. When he reached it he halted. The uniformed man on the motor-cycle had turned down this road, for he drove slowly up, and at a signal pulled in to the side.
A few words were exchanged. From the thickly padded belt below the wide trunk-hose of his Elizabethan costume the man drew forth several handfuls of jewels, including the famous Culross emeralds, and handed them over. And while he hurried into the opposite woods, making for a hut where a lounge-suit and overcoat lay neatly folded for him, the other man in the blue uniform was astride his powerful machine, setting the birds astir in the dark hedgerows as he roared along the deserted side-roads at fifty miles an hour, heading for London and the invariable destination for all the loot that went into Lord John’s treasury—‘The Green Lantern’ Inn beside the dark waters of the Thames.