“Yes?” repeated Sir Clinton, with a slight acidity in his tone. “And then?”
But the American failed to take the hint. Evidently he laid great stress on explaining exactly how things had fallen out.
“After a while,” he went on, with an evident effort to be accurate, “Miss Chacewater and someone else left the party.”
“Quite true,” Joan confirmed. “We went to play billiards.”
The American nodded.
“When you had gone,” he continued, “someone else joined the party—a red-haired young man whom they called Foxy.”
Sir Clinton glanced at Joan.
“That’s Foxton Polegate,” Joan explained. “He’s a neighbour of ours. He made these electrotypes of the medallions for us.”
Foss waited patiently till she had finished her interjection. Then he resumed his narrative.
“Shortly after that, my ear caught the sound of my own name. Naturally my attention was attracted, quite without any intention on my part. It’s only natural to prick up your ears when you hear your own name mentioned.”
He looked apologetically at them both as if asking them to condone his conduct.
“The next thing I heard—without listening intentionally, you understand?—was ‘Medusa Medallions.’ Now, as you know, I’ve been sent over here by Mr. Kessock to see if I can arrange to buy these medallions from Mr. Chacewater. It’s my duty to my employer to get to know all I can about them. I wouldn’t be earning my money if I spared any trouble in the work which has been put into my hands. So when I heard the name of the medallions mentioned, I … frankly, I listened with both ears. It seemed to me my duty to Mr. Kessock to do so.”
He looked appealingly at their faces as though to plead for a favourable verdict on his conduct.
“Go on, please,” Sir Clinton requested.
“I hardly expected you’d look on it as I do,” Foss confessed rather shamefacedly. “Of course, it was just plain eavesdropping on my part by that time. But I felt Mr. Kessock would have expected me to find out all I could about these medallions. To be candid, I’d do the same again; though I didn’t like doing it.”
Sir Clinton seemed to feel that he had been rather discouraging.
“I shouldn’t make too much of it, Mr. Foss. What happened next?”
Foss’s face showed that he was at last coming to a matter of real difficulty.
“It’s rather unfortunate that I came to be mixed up in the thing at all,” he said, with obvious chagrin. “I can assure you, Miss Chacewater, that I don’t like doing it. I only made up my mind to tell you about it because it seems to me to give a chance of hushing this supposed burglary up quietly before there’s any talk goes round.”
“Supposed burglary,” exclaimed Joan. “What’s your idea of a real burglary, if this sort of thing is only a supposed one?”
She indicated the shattered showcase and the litter of glass on the floor.
Foss evidently decided to take the rest of his narrative in a rush.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “The next thing I overheard was a complete plan for a fake burglary—a practical joke—to be carried out tonight. The light in here was to be put out; the houselights were to be extinguished: and in the darkness, your brother and this Mr. Foxy How-d’you-call-him were to get away with the medallions.”
“Ah, Mr. Foss, now you become interesting,” Sir Clinton acknowledged.
“I heard all the details,” Foss went on. “How Miss Rainhill was to see to extinguishing the lights; how Mr. Chacewater was to secure the keeper; and how meanwhile his friend was to put on a thick glove and take the medallions out of the case there. And it seems to me that it was a matter that interested me directly,” he added, dropping his air of apology, “for I gathered that the whole affair was planned with some idea of making this sale to Mr. Kessock fall through at the last moment.”
“Indeed?”
Sir Clinton’s face showed that at last he saw something more clearly than before.
“That was the motive,” Foss continued. “Now the whole thing put me in a most awkward position.”
“I think I see your difficulty,” Sir Clinton assured him, with more geniality than he had hitherto shown.
“It was very hard to make up my mind what to do,” Foss went on. “I’m a guest here. This was a family joke, apparently—one brother taking a rise out of another. It was hardly for me to step in and perhaps cause bad feelings between them. I thought the whole thing was perhaps just talk—not meant seriously in the end. A kind of ‘how-would-we-do-it-if-we-set-about-it’ discussion, you understand.”
Sir Clinton nodded understandingly.
“Difficult to know what to do, in your shoes, undoubtedly.”
Foss was obviously relieved by the Chief Constable’s comprehension.
“I thought it over,” he continued, with a less defensive tone in his voice, “and it seemed to me that the soundest course was to let sleeping dogs lie—to let them lie, at any rate, until they woke up and bit somebody. I made up my mind I’d say nothing about the matter at all, unless something really did happen.”
“Very judicious,” Sir Clinton acquiesced.
“Then came tonight,” Foss resumed. “Their plan went through. I don’t know what success they had—the house is full of all sorts of rumours. But I heard that the Chief Constable was on the spot and was taking up the case himself; and as soon as I heard that, I felt I ought to tell what I knew. So I hunted you out, so as to avoid your taking any steps before you knew just how the land lay. It’s only a practical joke and not a crime at
