I had made my vain tour of the lobby and was standing there hot and helpless, wondering what I should do, when a tall, nice-looking man limped into the room.
I suppose my face told my story, for he looked straight at me and smiled.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said.
Then he slid out of his coat and held it for me to put on.
I stared like a fool.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” he said. “Dog-collar in the right-hand pocket?”
“That’s right,” I blurted somehow.
Then I turned round and he helped me into the coat.
“And a good thing too,” he said. “But for that collar, I very much doubt if you’d ever have seen it again. It’s exactly like mine. I didn’t know there were two such good garments about. And this doesn’t mean I’m not sorry, because I am. It was most careless of me.”
I assured him that it did not matter and would have gone, but he detained me by talking, whilst he was finding his coat, and, when we went into the hall, he laid a hand on my shoulder and called a page.
“My name is Mansel,” he said gravely. “I beg that you’ll drink with me.”
I found it difficult to refuse, so I said I would take a cocktail, and we went and stood by the fire and I told him my name.
When we had drunk, he turned.
“I must make a confession,” he said. “I’m very interested in the date upon your dog-collar. Why did you put it there?”
There were a thousand answers: but I had not one upon my tongue. Yet, if I had been ready, I do not think I should have lied again. Honestly, I was rather grateful that the blow had fallen so soon, for, at least, in this way I had the chance of telling my tale before the papers told theirs, and Mansel had the look of a capable friend.
“I didn’t put it there,” said I.
“Ah,” said he, and waited.
“I can’t tell you now,” I went on, “because it’s too long a story, but if you’ll make an appointment …”
“Any time after ten tonight,” he said, and, with that, he gave me his card.
This bore the address of a flat in Cleveland Row.
“Can I bring a friend?” I said suddenly.
“Why certainly,” said he.
We parted then, and I went to my dinner with George.
To him I said nothing, except that I had an engagement that night for both of us. He looked at me rather hard, but asked no questions, and at a quarter to ten we set out for Cleveland Row.
Looking back, it seems more than strange to me that upon such a little matter as a couple of similar overcoats, hung up upon neighbouring pegs, should have depended life and death and fortune. But so it fell out. For Jonathan Mansel was, I think, the only man in the world who could have captained our enterprise and brought it through such vicissitudes to a triumphant end.
Mansel and George Hanbury listened to my tale without a word.
When I had finished, Mansel sat back in his chair.
“I can’t tell you much,” he said. “But the inscription on that collar is not a date. It’s a number. The man you saw murdered was in the secret service during the War. I knew him—as ‘Number 171016.’ He was known to be a crook but he was a very good man. He’d a big future. Then Ellis cooked his goose—saddled him with four big robberies in open Court. They let him get out of the country, but of course he couldn’t come back. He was broken up, I heard, for his heart was right in the game. I suppose that’s why …”
He broke off and nodded at the collar.
For a while none of us spoke.
Then I took out a knife and passed it to Mansel.
“Will you open the collar?” I said.
We were sitting about a table, with the collar before us and a light hung above.
Mansel cut some stitches and, little by little, ripped the lining away. Almost at once some yellow material appeared, very stained and wrinkled and lying as flat against the collar as the lining itself. I made sure this was padding, but, when he had made the opening a little larger, Mansel got hold of the stuff and pulled it out.
It was a piece of oiled silk and seemed to have been part of a tobacco pouch, for, when it was unfolded, it had the form of an envelope without its flap. Within this again was a piece of thin notepaper, of which when it was opened, we could see three sides had been covered with a clear, close-written hand.
Mansel read it aloud, while Hanbury and I peered, one over either arm.
“Statement of Carl Ramek, well-digger, aged 92.
“My great-grandfather dug the great well of Wagensburg. He and his brother dug it with their father, the three working together in the great drought of 17—. The well is ninety feet deep. The first spring rises thirty feet down, so that normally there is sixty feet of water. There is no well like it hereabouts. They could not have got so deep but for the great drought. All the work in the well was done by my great-grandfather and his brother and their father alone. The masons cut the stones as they were told and brought them and the wood and the mortar to the top, but no one went down except the father and his two sons. That was by order of the Count. They used to sleep at the Castle, whilst they were doing this work. Out of the well there runs a shaft. The shaft leaves the well about eighty feet down. It runs up at an angle into a chamber. The chamber is just above the level of the first spring. No one knew of the shaft except my great-grandfather and his father and his brother and the Count. The
