“Benton will be there to look after you, and one of the ‘Old Guard’—”
He saw the frightened look in her face and chuckled.
“What’s the matter, you fool?” he asked good-humouredly. “He’ll dance with the girl.”
“I wish those fellows weren’t going to be there,” she said uneasily, but he went on, without noticing her:
“I shall arrive at half-past eleven. You had better meet me near the entrance to the American bar. My party didn’t turn up, you understand. You’ll get back here at midnight.”
“So soon?” she said in dismay. “Why, it doesn’t end till—”
“You’ll be back here at midnight,” he said evenly. “Go into her room, clear up everything she may have left behind. You understand? Nothing is to be left.”
“But when she comes back she’ll—”
“She’ll not come back,” said Monty Newton, and the girl’s blood ran cold.
VII
“Moral Suasion”
“There’s a man wants to see you, governor.”
It was a quarter-past nine. The girls had been gone ten minutes, and Montague Newton had settled himself down to pass the hours of waiting before he had to dress. He put down the patience cards he was shuffling.
“A man to see me? Who is he, Fred?”
“I don’t know: I’ve never seen him before. Looks to me like a ‘busy.’ ”
A detective! Monty’s eyebrows rose, but not in trepidation. He had met many detectives in the course of his chequered career and had long since lost his awe of them.
“Show him in,” he said with a nod.
The slim man in evening dress who came softly into the room was a stranger to Monty, who knew most of the prominent figures in the world of criminal detection. And yet his face was in some way familiar.
“Captain Newton?” he asked.
“That is my name.” Newton rose with a smile.
The visitor looked slowly round towards the door through which the footman had gone.
“Do your servants always listen at the keyhole?” he asked, in a quiet, measured tone, and Newton’s face went a dusky red. In two strides he was at the door and had flung it open, just in time to see the disappearing heels of the footman.
“Here, you!” He called the man back, a scowl on his face. “If you want to know anything, will you come in and ask?” he roared. “If I catch you listening at my door, I’ll murder you!”
The man with a muttered excuse made a hurried escape.
“How did you know?” growled Newton, as he came back into the room and slammed the door behind him.
“I have an instinct for espionage,” said the stranger, and went on, without a break: “I have called for Miss Mirabelle Leicester.”
Newton’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, you have, have you?” he said softly. “Miss Leicester is not in the house. She left a quarter of an hour ago.”
“I did not see her come out of the house?”
“No, the fact is, she went out by way of the mews. My—er”—he was going to say “sister” but thought better of it—“my young friend—”
“Flash Jane Smith,” said the stranger. “Yes?”
Newton’s colour deepened. He was rapidly reaching the point when his sangfroid, nine-tenths of his moral assets, was in danger of deserting him.
“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.
The stranger wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, a curiously irritating action of his, for some inexplicable reason.
“My name is Leon Gonsalez,” he said simply.
Instinctively the man drew back. Of course! Now he remembered, and the colour had left his cheeks, leaving him grey. With an effort he forced a smile.
“One of the redoubtable Four Just Men? What extraordinary birds you are!” he said. “I remember ten-fifteen years ago, being scared out of my life by the very mention of your name—you came to punish where the law failed, eh?”
“You must put that in your reminiscences,” said Leon gently. “For the moment I am not in an autobiographical mood.”
But Newton could not be silenced.
“I know a man”—he was speaking slowly, with quiet vehemence—“who will one day cause you a great deal of inconvenience, Mr. Leon Gonsalez: a man who never forgets you in his prayers. I won’t tell you who he is.”
“It is unnecessary. You are referring to the admirable Oberzohn. Did I not kill his brother … ? Yes, I thought I was right. He was the man with the oxycephalic head and the queerly prognathic jaw. An interesting case: I would like to have had his measurements, but I was in rather a hurry.”
He spoke almost apologetically for his haste.
“But we’re getting away from the subject, Mr. Newton. You say this young lady has left your house by the mews, and you were about to suggest she left in the care of Miss—I don’t know what you call her. Why did she leave that way?”
Leon Gonsalez had something more than an instinct for espionage: he had an instinct for truth, and he knew two things immediately: first, that Newton was not lying when he said the girl had left the house; secondly, that there was an excellent, but not necessarily a sinister, reason for the furtive departure.
“Where has she gone?”
“Home,” said the other laconically. “Where else should she go?”
“She came to dinner … intending to stay the night?”
“Look here, Gonsalez,” interrupted Monty Newton savagely. “You and your gang were wonderful people twenty years ago, but a lot has happened since then—and we don’t shiver at the name of the Three Just Men. I’m not a child—do you get that? And you’re not so very terrible at close range. If you want to complain to the police—”
“Meadows is outside. I persuaded him to let me see you first,” said Leon, and Newton started.
“Outside?” incredulously.
In two strides he was at the window and had pulled aside the blind. On the other side of the street a man was standing on the edge of the sidewalk, intently surveying the gutter. He knew him at once.
“Well, bring him in,” he said.
“Where has this young lady gone? That is all I want to know.”
“She has gone home, I tell you.”
Leon
