Leon Gonsalez had a momentary pang of contrition, for he might have saved her all this.
It was two months exactly from the day he had left London, when he came running up the stairs of the Jermyn Street flat and burst in upon Manfred.
“You’re looking fit and fine, Leon,” said George, jumping up and gripping his hand. “You didn’t write and I ever expected that you would. I only got back from Spain two days ago.”
He gave the news from Seville and then:
“You proved the case?”
“To our satisfaction,” said Leon grimly. “Though you would not satisfy the law that Lynne was guilty. It is, however, a perfectly clear case. I visited his agent when I was in Buenos Aires, and took the liberty of rifling his desk in his absence. I found several letters from Lynne and by their tone there can be no doubt whatever that Lynne is consciously engaged in this traffic.”
They looked at one another.
“The rest is simple,” said Manfred, “and I will leave you to work out the details, my dear Leon, with every confidence that Mr. Homer Lynne will be very sorry indeed that he departed from the safe and narrow way.”
There was no more painstaking, thorough or conscientious workman that Leon Gonsalez. The creation of punishment was to him a work of love. No General ever designed the battle with a more punctilious regard to the minutest detail than Leon.
Before the day was over he had combed the neighbourhood in which Mr. Lynne lived of every vital fact. It was then that he learnt of Mr. Lynne’s passion for music. The cab which took Leon back to Jermyn Street did not go fast enough: he literally leapt into the sitting-room, chortling his joy.
“The impossible is possible, my dear George,” he cried, pacing about the apartment like a man demented. “I thought I should never be able to carry my scheme into effect, but he loves music, George! He adores the tuneful phonograph!”
“A little ice water, I think,” suggested Manfred gently.
“No, no,” said Leon, “I am not hot, I am cool: I am ice itself! And who would expect such good luck? Tonight we will drive to Hampstead and we will hear his concert.”
It was a long time before he gave a coherent account of what he had learnt. Mr. Lynne was extremely unpopular in the neighbourhood, and Leon explained why.
Manfred understood better that night, when the silence of the sedate road in which Mr. Lynne’s detached house was situated was broken by the shrill sound of trumpets, and the rolling of drums, the clanging of bells, the simulated boom of cannon—all the barbarian musical interjection which has made 1812 so popular with unmusical people.
“It sounds like a real band,” said Manfred in surprise.
A policeman strolled along, and seeing the car standing before the house, turned his head with a laugh.
“It’s an awful row, isn’t it?”
“I wonder it doesn’t wake everybody up,” suggested Manfred.
“It does,” replied the policeman, “or it did until they got used to it. It’s the loudest gramophone in the world, I should think: like one of those things you have at the bottom of the tube stairs, to tell the people to move on. A stentaphone, isn’t it?”
“How long does this go on? All night?” asked Manfred.
“For about an hour, I believe,” said the policeman. “The gentleman who lives in that house can’t go to sleep without music. He’s a bit artistic, I think.”
“He is,” said Leon grimly.
The next day he found out that four servants were kept in the establishment, three of whom slept on the premises. Mr. Lynne was in the habit of returning home every evening at about ten o’clock, except on Fridays when he went out of Town.
Wednesday evening was the cook’s night out, and it was also the night when Mr. Lynne’s butler and general factotum was allowed an evening off. There remained the housemaid, and even she presented no difficulty. The real trouble was that all these people would return to the house or the neighbourhood at eleven o’clock. Leon decided to make his appointment with Mr. Lynne for Friday night, on which day he usually went to Brighton. He watched the genial man leave Victoria, and then he called up Lynne’s house.
“Is that Masters?” he asked, and a man’s voice answered him.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply.
“It is Mr. Mandez here,” said Leon, imitating the curious broken English of Lynne’s Mexican assistant. “Mr. Lynne is returning to the house tonight on very important business, and he does not want any of the servants to be there.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Masters and showed no surprise. Evidently these instructions had been given before. Leon had expected some difficulty here, and had prepared a very elaborate explanation which it was not necessary to give.
“He wouldn’t like me to stay, sir?”
“Oh, no,” said Leon. “Mr. Lynne particularly said that nobody was to be in the house. He wants the side door and the kitchen door left unlocked,” he added as an afterthought. It was a brilliant afterthought if it came off, and apparently it did.
“Very good, sir,” said Masters.
Leon went straight from the telephone call-box, where he had sent the message, to the counter and wrote out a wire, addressed to Lynne, Hotel Ritz, Brighton. The message ran:
“The girl Goldstein has been discovered at Santa Fe. Terrible row. Police have been making enquiries. Have very important information for you. I am waiting for you at your house.”
He signed it Mandez.
“He will get the wire at eight. There
