“That’s certainly a queer-looking object,” he said. “Was that what you were looking for?”
She nodded.
“Yes—though I didn’t know this was all I should get from my trip. Which sounds a little mad, doesn’t it? Only—there was a Portuguese gardener named Silva who knew my father. He used to be in the service of a relative of ours. Didn’t I boast once that I was related to Lord Selford—by the way, what is he like?”
“Like the letter O, only dimmer,” he said. “I never saw him.”
She asked a question and then went on:
“About three months ago a letter came to my mother. It was written in very bad English by a priest, and said that Silva was dead, and that before he died he asked her forgiveness for all the harm he had done to us. He left something which was only to be given into the hand of a member of our family. That sounds remarkable, doesn’t it?”
Dick nodded, impatient for her to continue.
“Of course, it was out of the question for mother or me to go—we have very little money to spare for sea trips. But the day after we got the letter, we had another, posted in London and containing a hundred pounds in notes and a return ticket to Madeira!”
“Sent by?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. At any rate, I went. The old priest was very glad to see me; he told me that his little house had been burgled three times in one month, and that he was sure the burglars were after the little package he was keeping for me. I expected something very valuable, especially as I learnt that Senhor Silva was a very rich man. You can imagine how I felt when I opened the box and found—this key.”
Dick turned the key over in his hand.
“Silva was rich—a gardener, you said? Must have made a lot of money, eh? Did he leave a letter?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing. I was disappointed and rather amused. For some reason or other, I put the key into the pocket of the coat I was wearing, and that was lucky or unlucky for me. I had hardly left the priests’ house before a man came out of a side alley, snatched my bag, and was out of sight before I could call for help. There was nothing very valuable in the bag, but it was all very alarming. When I got on board ship, I put the key in an envelope and gave it to the purser.”
“Nobody bothered you on the ship?”
She laughed quietly as at a good joke.
“Not unless you would call the experience of finding your trunk turned out and your bed thrown on to the floor a ‘bother.’ That happened twice between Madeira and Southampton. Is it sufficiently romantic?”
“It certainly is!” said Dick, drawing a long breath. He looked at the key again. “What number Coram Street?” he asked.
She told him before she realized the impertinence of the question.
“What do you think is the meaning of these queer happenings?” she asked as he passed the cardboard box back to her.
“It’s surely queer. Maybe somebody wanted that key badly.”
It seemed to her a very lame explanation.
She was still wondering what had made her so communicative to a comparative stranger when the train ran into Waterloo Station. She felt a little nettled by his casual farewell; a nod and he had disappeared behind the screen of other passengers and their friends who crowded the platform.
It was a quarter of an hour later before she retrieved her baggage from the welter of trunks that littered the vicinity of the baggage van. A porter found her a cab, and she was tipping him, when a man brushed past her, jostling her arm, whilst a second man bumped into her from the opposite side. Her bag slipped from her hand and fell to the pavement. Before she could stoop, a third man had snatched it from the ground, and, quick as lightning, passed it to an unobtrusive little man who stood behind him. The thief turned to fly, but a hand grasped his collar and jerked him round, and as his hands came up in defence, a fist as hard as ebony caught him under the jaw and sent him flying.
“Get on your feet, thief, and produce your bag-snatching permit!” said Dick Martin sternly.
VII
At ten o’clock the next morning Dick Martin walked blithely into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The birds were twittering in the high trees, the square lay bathed in pale April sunshine, and as for Slick, he was at peace with the world, though he had travelled nigh on thirty thousand miles and had failed to report at the end of them.
Messrs Havelock and Havelock occupied an old Queen Anne house that stood shoulder to shoulder with other mansions of the period. A succession of brass plates on the door announced this as the registered office of a dozen corporations, for Mr. Havelock was a company lawyer, who, though he never appeared in the courts, gave the inestimable benefit of his advice to innumerable and prosperous corporations.
Evidently the detective was expected, for the clerk in the outer office was almost genial.
“I will tell Mr. Havelock you’re here,” he said, and came back in a few seconds to beckon the wanderer into the private sanctum of the senior partner.
As Dick Martin came in, he was finishing the dictation of a letter, and he smiled a welcome and nodded to a chair. When the dictation was done and the homely stenographer dismissed, he got up from the big writing-table, filling his pipe.
“So you didn’t see him?” he asked.
“No, sir. I moved fast, but he was quicker. I got into Rio the day he left. I was in Cape Town just three days after he had gone on overland to Beira—and then I had your cable.”
Havelock nodded solemnly, puffing at his pipe.
“The erratic devil!”
