Thomas felt himself at a disadvantage.
'I tell you, my dear,' he said to the window, 'I am not easy in my
mind.'
'Nonsense,' snapped Lady Julia; 'absurd--ridiculous!'
Lady Julia Blunt, when conversing, resembled a Maxim gun more than
anything else.
'But your diamonds, my dear.'
'We can take care of them.'
'But why should we have the trouble? Now, if we--'
'It's no trouble.'
'When we were married, there was a detective--'
'Don't be childish, Thomas. Detectives at weddings are quite
customary.'
'But--'
'Bah!'
'I paid twenty thousand pounds for that rope of diamonds,' said Sir
Thomas, obstinately. Switch things upon a cash basis, and he was
more at ease.
'May I ask if you suspect any of our guests of being criminals?'
inquired Lady Julia, with a glance of chill disdain.
Sir Thomas looked out of the window. At the moment, the sternest
censor could have found nothing to cavil at in the movements of such
of the house-party as were in sight. Some were playing tennis, some
clock-golf, and others were smoking.
'Why, no,' he admitted.
'Of course. Absurd--quite absurd!'
'But the servants. We have engaged a number of new servants lately.'
'With excellent recommendations.'
Sir Thomas was on the point of suggesting that the recommendations
might be forged, but his courage failed him. Julia was sometimes so
abrupt in these little discussions! She did not enter into his point
of view. He was always a trifle inclined to treat the castle as a
branch of Blunt's Stores. As proprietor of the stores, he had made a
point of suspecting everybody, and the results had been excellent.
In Blunt's Stores, you could hardly move in any direction without
bumping into a gentlemanly detective, efficiently disguised. For the
life of him, Sir Thomas could not see why the same principle should
not obtain at Dreever. Guests at a country house do not as a rule
steal their host's possessions, but then it is only an occasional
customer at a store who goes in for shop-lifting. It was the
principle of the thing, he thought: Be prepared against every
emergency. With Sir Thomas Blunt, suspiciousness was almost a mania.
He was forced to admit that the chances were against any of his
guests exhibiting larcenous tendencies, but, as for the servants, he
thoroughly mistrusted them all, except Saunders, the butler. It had
seemed to him the merest prudence that a detective from a private
inquiry agency should be installed at the castle while the house was
full. Somewhat rashly, he had mentioned this to his wife, and Lady
Julia's critique of the scheme had been terse and unflattering.
