When I returned to the hall, carrying my bag, I found Audrey there.
“I’m being sent to London,” I announced.
“I know. White told me. Peter, bring him back.”
“That’s why I’m being sent.”
“It means everything to me.”
I looked at her in surprise. There was a strained, anxious expression on her face, for which I could not account. I declined to believe that anybody could care what happened to the Little Nugget purely for that amiable youth’s own sake. Besides, as he had gone to London willingly, the assumption was that he was enjoying himself.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you. Mr. Ford sent me here to be near Ogden, to guard him. He knew that there was always a danger of attempts being made to kidnap him, even though he was brought over to England very quietly. That is how I come to be here. I go wherever Ogden goes. I am responsible for him. And I have failed. If Ogden is not brought back, Mr. Ford will have nothing more to do with me. He never forgives failures. It will mean going back to the old work again—the dressmaking, or the waiting, or whatever I can manage to find.” She gave a little shiver. “Peter, I can’t. All the pluck has gone out of me. I’m afraid. I couldn’t face all that again. Bring him back. You must. You will. Say you will.”
I did not answer. I could find nothing to say; for it was I who was responsible for all her trouble. I had planned everything. I had given Ogden Ford the money that had taken him to London. And soon, unless I could reach London before it happened, and prevent him, he, with my valet Smith, would be in the Dover boat-train on his way to Monaco.
IX
I
It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in Ogden’s position, with his record of narrow escapes from the kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had finished speaking.
The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition. There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its success.
But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for leading me into this tangle.
I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
“Mr. Abney would like to see you, sir.”
I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had begun to tear at my nerves.
“Cub id, Bister Burds,” said my employer, swallowing a lozenge. His aspect was more dazed than ever. “White has just bade an—ah—extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod’s Agedcy, of which you have, of course—ah—heard.”
So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised. Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr. Abney nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks could hardly have added greatly to Mr. Abney’s nervousness at the present juncture.
“Sent here by Mr. Ford, I suppose?” I said. I had to say something.
“Exactly. Ah—precisely.” He sneezed. “Bister Ford, without codsulting me—I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his actiod—dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at this—ah—house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt’s dotice, bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.”
I thought the reasoning sound.
“All thad, however,” resumed Mr. Abney, removing his face from a jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, “is beside the poidt. I berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to London.”
“What!”
The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
“I don’t think it’s necessary, Mr. Abney,” I protested. “I am sure I can manage this affair by myself.”
“Two heads are better thad wud,” said the invalid sententiously,
