“If anybody had come last night I shouldn’t have heard them,” he confessed. “I slept like a dead man.” He touched his head gingerly. “It smarts, but the ache is gone,” he said, not loth to discuss his infirmities. “The doctor said I had a narrow escape; he thought there was a fracture. Would you like me to make you some tea, miss, or shall I call the servant?”
She shook her head, but he had already disappeared, and came seeking her in the garden ten minutes later, with a cup of tea in his hand. He told her for the second time that he was a police pensioner and had been in the employ of Gonsalez for three years. The Three paid well, and had, she learned to her surprise, considerable private resources.
“Does it pay them—this private detective business?”
“Lord bless your heart, no, miss!” He scoffed at the idea. “They are very rich men. I thought everybody knew that. They say Mr. Gonsalez was worth a million even before the war.”
This was astonishing news.
“But why do they do this”—she hesitated—“this sort of thing?”
“It is a hobby, miss,” said the man vaguely. “Some people run racehorses, some own yachts—these gentlemen get a lot of pleasure out of their work and they pay well,” he added.
Men in the regular employ of the Three Just Men not only received a good wage, but frequently a bonus which could only be described as colossal. Once, after they had rounded up and destroyed a gang of Spanish bank robbers, they had distributed £1,000 to every man who was actively employed. He hinted rather than stated that this money had formed part of the loot which the Three had recovered, and did not seem to think that there was anything improper in this distribution of illicit gains.
“After all, miss,” he said philosophically, “when you collect money like that, it’s impossible to give it back to the people it came from. This Diego had been holding up banks for years, and banks are not like people—they don’t feel the loss of money.”
“That’s a thoroughly immoral view,” said Mirabelle, intent upon her flower-picking.
“It may be, miss,” agreed Digby, who had evidently been one of the recipients of bounty, and took a complacent and a tolerant view. “But a thousand pounds is a lot of money.”
The day passed without event. From the early evening papers that came from Gloucester she learned of the fire at Oberzohn’s, and did not connect the disaster with anything but an accident. She was not sorry. The fire had licked out one ugly chapter from the past. Incidentally it had destroyed a crude painting which was, to Dr. Oberzohn, more precious than any that Leonardo had painted or Raphael conceived, but this she did not know.
It was just before the dinner hour that there came the first unusual incident of the day. Mirabelle was standing by the garden gate, intent upon the glories of the evening sky, which was piled high with red and slate-coloured cumuli. The glass was falling and a wet night was promised. But the loveliness of that lavish colouring held her. And then she became dimly aware that a man was coming towards the house from the direction of Gloucester. He walked in the middle of the road slowly, as though he, too, were admiring the view and there was no need to hurry. His hands were behind him, his soft felt hat at the back of his head. A stocky-looking man, but his face was curiously familiar. He turned his unsmiling eyes in her direction, and, looking again at his strong features, at the tiny grey-black moustache under his aquiline nose, she was certain she had seen him before. Perhaps she had passed him in the street, and had retained a subconscious mental picture of him.
He slowed his step until, when he came abreast of her, he stopped.
“This is Heavytree Lane?” he asked, in a deep, musical voice.
“No—the lane is the first break in the hedge,” she smiled. “I’m afraid it isn’t much of a road—generally it is ankle-deep in mud.”
He looked past her to the house; his eyes ranged the windows, dropped for a moment upon a climbing clematis, and came back to her.
“I don’t know Gloucestershire very well,” he said, and added: “You have a very nice house.”
“Yes,” she said in surprise.
“And a garden.” And then, innocently: “Do you grow onions?”
She stared at him and laughed.
“I think we do—I am not sure. My aunt looks after the kitchen garden.”
His sad eyes wandered over the house again.
“It is a very nice place,” he said, and, lifting his hat, went on.
Digby was out: he had gone for a gentle walk, and, looking up the road after the stranger, she saw the guard appear round a bend in the road, saw him stop and speak to the stranger. Apparently they knew one another, for they shook hands at meeting, and after a while Digby pointed down the road to where she was standing, and she saw the man nod. Soon after the stranger went on out of view. Who could he be? Was it an additional guard that the three men had put to protect her? When Digby came up to her, she asked him. “That gentleman, miss? He is Mr. Poiccart.”
“Poiccart?” she said, delighted. “Oh, I wish I had known!”
“I was surprised to see him,” said the guard. “As a matter of fact, he’s the one of the three gentlemen I’ve met the most. He’s generally in Curzon Street, even when the others are away.”
Digby had nothing to say about Poiccart except that he was a very quiet gentleman and took no active part in the operations of the Just Men.
“I wonder why he wanted to know about onions?” asked the girl thoughtfully. “That sounded awfully mysterious.”
It would not have been so mysterious
