His apprehensions proved well founded. Scarcely had he got well into the details of an ingenious plot on the part of a secret society to eliminate Gridley Quayle by bribing his cook—a bad lot—to sprinkle chopped-up horsehair in his chicken fricassee, when the doorknob turned and Ashe Marson came in.
Freddie was not the only person who had found the influx of visitors into the sick room a source of irritation. The fact that the invalid seemed unable to get a moment to himself had annoyed Ashe considerably. For some little time he had hung about the passage in which Freddie’s room was situated, full of enterprise, but unable to make a forward move owing to the throng of sympathizers. What he had to say to the sufferer could not be said in the presence of a third party.
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 tête-à-tête 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 untouched. 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.
