“We left a few silver knickknacks lying about. I don’t see any of them.”
Inspector Armadale made a note in his pocketbook.
“Could you give me a list of them?” he asked.
Miss Fordingbridge seemed taken aback.
“No, I couldn’t. How could you expect me to remember all the trifles we left about? I daresay I could remember some of them. There was a silver rose-bowl; but it was very thin, and I’m sure it wasn’t worth much. And a couple of little hollow statuettes, and some other things. They weren’t of any value.”
“What room is this?” Sir Clinton inquired, cutting her eloquence short, as they paused before a fresh door.
“The drawing-room.”
She went in before the others and cast a glance round the room.
“What’s that?” she demanded, as though her companions were personally responsible for a sack which stood near one of the windows.
Armadale went swiftly across the room, opened the mouth of the sack and glanced inside.
“It looks like the missing loot,” he remarked. “I can see something like a rose-bowl amongst it, and the head of one of your statuettes. You might look for yourself, Miss Fordingbridge.”
He stood aside to let her inspect the contents of the sack.
“Yes, these are some of the things,” she confirmed at once.
Sir Clinton and Wendover in turn examined the find. The chief constable tested the weight of the sack and its contents.
“Not much of a haul,” he said, letting it settle to the floor again. “Taking pure silver at eight shillings an ounce, and allowing for alloy, there’s less than twenty pounds’ worth there—much less.”
“I suppose this means that the thieves must have been disturbed, and left their swag behind them,” Paul Fordingbridge suggested.
Sir Clinton seemed intent on an examination of the window-fastenings; but Inspector Armadale curtly agreed with Paul Fordingbridge’s hypothesis.
“It looks like it.”
The chief constable led the way to a fresh room.
“What’s this?” he asked.
Miss Fordingbridge seemed suddenly to take a keener interest in the search.
“This is my nephew’s room. I do hope they haven’t disturbed anything in it. I’ve been so careful to keep it exactly as it used to be. And it would be such a pity if it were disturbed just at the very moment when he’s come back.”
Sir Clinton’s eye caught an expression of vexation on Paul Fordingbridge’s face as his sister spoke of her nephew.
“He’s been away, then?” he asked.
It required very little to start Miss Fordingbridge on the subject; and in a few minutes of eager explanation she had laid before them the whole matter of her missing relation. As her narrative proceeded, Sir Clinton could see the expression of annoyance deepening on her brother’s features.
“And so you understand, Sir Clinton, I kept everything in his room just as it used to be; so that when he comes back again he’ll find nothing strange. It’ll just be as if he’d only left us for a weekend.”
Wendover noticed something pathetic in her attitude. For a moment the normal angularity and fussiness seemed to have left her manner.
“Poor soul!” he reflected. “Another case of unsatisfied maternity, I suppose. She seems to have adored this nephew of hers.”
Paul Fordingbridge seemed to think that enough time had been spent on the family’s private affairs.
“Is there anything more that you’d care to see?” he asked Sir Clinton, in an indifferent tone.
The chief constable seemed to have been interested in Miss Fordingbridge’s tale.
“Just a moment,” he said half-apologetically to Paul Fordingbridge. “I’d like to be sure about one or two points.”
He crossed the room and examined the window-catches with some care.
“Now, Miss Fordingbridge,” he said, as he turned back after finding the fastenings intact like the others, “this is a room which you’re sure to remember accurately, since you say you looked after it yourself. Can you see anything missing from it?”
Miss Fordingbridge gazed from point to point, checking the various objects from her mental inventory.
“Yes,” she said suddenly, “there’s a small silver inkstand missing from his desk.”
“I saw an inkstand in the sack,” Armadale confirmed.
Sir Clinton nodded approvingly.
“Anything else, Miss Fordingbridge?”
For a time her eyes ranged over the room without detecting the absence of anything. Then she gave a cry in which surprise and disappointment seemed to be mingled. Her finger pointed to a bookshelf on which a number of books were neatly arranged.
“Why,” she said, “there’s surely something missing from that! It doesn’t look quite as full as I remember it.”
She hurried across the room, knelt down, and scanned the shelves closely. When she spoke again, it was evident that she was cut to the heart.
“Yes, it’s gone! Oh, I’d have given almost anything rather than have this happen! Do you know what it is, Paul? It’s Derek’s diary—all the volumes. You know how carefully he kept it all the time he was here. And now it’s lost. And he’ll be back here in a few days, and I’m sure he’ll want it.”
Still kneeling before the bookshelves, she turned round to the chief constable.
“Sir Clinton, you must get that back for me. I don’t care what else they’ve taken.”
The chief constable refrained from making any promise. He glanced at Paul Fordingbridge, and was puzzled by what he read on his features. Commiseration for his sister seemed to be mingled with some other emotion which baffled Sir Clinton. Acute vexation, repressed only with difficulty, seemed to have its part; but there was something also which suggested more than a little trepidation.
“It’s a rather important set of documents,” Paul Fordingbridge said, after a pause. “If you can lay your hands on them, Sir Clinton, my sister will be very much indebted to you. They would certainly never have been left here if it had not been for her notions. I wish you’d taken my advice, Jay,” he added irritably, turning to his sister. “You know perfectly well that I wanted to keep them in my own possession; but you made such a fuss about it that I
