“Of course—I had forgotten that,” he said softly. “The lights went out!”
All the way back to the Yard he was trying to bring something from the back of his mind—something that was there, the smooth tip of it tantalizingly displayed, yet eluding every grasp. It had nothing to do with the lights—nor Gonsalez, nor yet the girl. Gurther? No. Nor Manfred? What was it? A name had been mentioned to him that day—it had a mysterious significance. A golden idol! He picked up the end of the thought … Johnny! Manfred’s one mystery. That was the dust which lay on all thought. And now that he remembered, he was disappointed. It was so ridiculously unimportant a matter to baffle him.
He left his companions at the corner of Curzon Street and went alone to the house. There was a streak of light showing between the curtains in the upstairs room. The passage was illuminated—Poiccart answered his ring at once.
“Yes, George and Leon were here a little time back—the girl? No, they said nothing about a girl. They looked rather worried, I thought. Miss Leicester, I suppose? Won’t you come in?”
“No, I can’t wait. There’s a light in Manfred’s room.”
The ghost of a smile lit the heavy face and faded as instantly.
“My room also,” he said. “Butlers take vast liberties in the absence of their masters. Shall I give a message to George?”
“Ask him to call me at the Yard.”
Poiccart closed the door on him; stopped in the passage to arrange a salver on the table and hung up a hat. All this Meadows saw through the fanlight and walking-stick periscope which is so easily fitted and can be of such value. And seeing, his doubts evaporated.
Poiccart went slowly up the stairs into the little office room, pulled back the curtains and opened the window at the top. The next second, the watching detective saw the light go out and went away.
“I’m sorry to keep you in the dark,” said Poiccart.
The men who were in the room waited until the shutters were fast and the curtains pulled across, and then the light flashed on. White of face, her eyes closed, her breast scarcely moving, Mirabelle Leicester lay on the long settee. Her domino was a heap of shimmering green and scarlet on the floor, and Leon was gently sponging her face, George Manfred watching from the back of the settee, his brows wrinkled.
“Will she die?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t know: they sometimes die of that stuff,” replied Leon cold-bloodedly. “She must have had it pretty raw. Gurther is a crude person.”
“What was it?” asked George.
Gonsalez spread out his disengaged hand in a gesture of uncertainty.
“If you can imagine morphia with a kick in it, it was that. I don’t know. I hope she doesn’t die: she is rather young—it would be the worst of bad luck.”
Poiccart stirred uneasily. He alone had within his soul what Leon would call “a trace” of sentiment.
“Could we get Elver?” he asked anxiously, and Leon looked up with his boyish smile. “Growing onions in Seville has softened you, Raymondo mio!” He never failed in moments of great strain to taunt the heavy man with his two years of agricultural experiment, and they knew that the gibes were deliberately designed to steady his mind. “Onions are sentimental things—they make you cry: a vegetable muchos simpatico! This woman is alive!”
Her eyelids had fluttered twice. Leon lifted the bare arm, inserted the needle of a tiny hypodermic and pressed home the plunger.
“Tomorrow she will feel exactly as if she had been drunk,” he said calmly, “and in her mouth will be the taste of ten rank cigars. Oh, senorinetta, open thy beautiful eyes and look upon thy friends!”
The last sentence was in Spanish. She heard: the lids fluttered and rose.
“You’re a long way from Heavytree Farm, Miss Leicester.”
She looked up wonderingly into the kindly face of George Manfred.
“Where am I?” she asked faintly, and closed her eyes again with a grimace of pain.
“They always ask that—just as they do in books,” said Leon oracularly. “If they don’t say ‘Where am I?’ they ask for their mothers. She’s quite out of danger.”
One hand was on her wrist, another at the side of her neck.
“Remarkably regular. She has a good head—mathematical probably.”
“She is very beautiful,” said Poiccart in a hushed voice.
“All people are beautiful—just as all onions are beautiful. What is the difference between a lovely maid and the ugliest of duennas—what but a matter of pigmentation and activity of tissue? Beneath that, an astounding similarity of the circulatory, sustentacular, motorvascular—”
“How long have we got?” Manfred interrupted him, and Leon shook his head.
“I don’t know—not long, I should think. Of course, we could have told Meadows and he’d have turned out police reserves, but I should like to keep them out of it.”
“The Old Guard was there?”
“Every man jack of them—those tough lads! They will be here just as soon as the Herr Doktor discovers what is going forward. Now, I think you can travel. I want her out of the way.”
Stooping, he put his hands under her and lifted her. The strength in his frail body was a never-ending source of wonder to his two friends.
They followed him down the stairs and along the short passage, down another flight to the kitchen. Manfred opened a door and went out into the paved yard. There was a heavier door in the boundary wall. He opened this slowly and peeped out. Here was the inevitable mews. The sound of an engine running came from a garage nearby. Evidently somebody was on the look out for them. A long-bodied car drew up noiselessly and a woman got out. Beside the driver at the wheel sat two men.
“I think you’ll just miss the real excitement,” said Gonsalez, and then to the nurse he gave a few words of instruction and closed the door on her.
“Take the direct road,” he said
