“Oh! my dear,” said Phyllis. “I do wish you’d give it up. You’ve escaped this time, but sooner or later they’ll get you. It isn’t worth it.”
Drummond shook his head, and again encircled his wife’s waist with his arm.
“You wouldn’t like me to let that poor devil’s death go unavenged, would you?” He looked up at her, and she shrugged her shoulders resignedly. A year of marriage with this vast husband of hers had convinced her of the futility of arguing with him once his mind was made up. “Not that the country will be appreciably worse off for his departure, but that’s not the point. He was doing a job for me when it happened, and I don’t stand for that at all.”
“What do you propose to do?” demanded Jerry Seymour, thoughtfully refilling his glass.
“Well, there, old son, at the moment you have me beat,” conceded Hugh. “I sort of figured it out this way. Whoever the bird is who bunged that bomb, he recognised me as being the leader of our little bunch. I mean it was me he was staring at through the door with eyes bubbling over with tenderness and love. It was me that bally bomb was intended for—not Ginger Martin, though he was actually doing the work. And if this cove is prepared to wreck his own office just to get me out of the way—I guess I must be somewhat unpopular.”
“The reasoning seems extraordinarily profound,” murmured Peter.
“Now the great point is—does he know who I am?” continued Hugh. “Is the little treasure now saying to himself, what time he lowers the evening cup of bread-and-milk, ‘That has settled the hash of one Hugh Drummond,’ or is he merely saying, ‘I have nastily disintegrated the leader of the Black Gang’?”
“But what’s it matter anyway?” demanded Toby. “He hasn’t disintegrated you, and he’s smashed up his own office—so I fail to see where he wins the grand piano.”
“That, old Toby, is where you show yourself incapable of grasping the finer points of the situation.” Hugh thoughtfully lit a cigarette. “Our great difficulty, before Zaboleff was kind enough to present us with the address of their headquarters, was to get in touch with the man at the top. And now the headquarters are no more. No man can work in an office with periodical boulders falling on his head from the roof, and a large hole in the wall just behind him. I mean there’s no privacy about it. And so—unless he knows me—he won’t be able to carry on the good work when he finds that neither of my boots has reached the top of St. Paul’s. We shall be parted again—which is dreadful to think of. There’s no cheery little meeting ground where we can foregather for the matutinal Martini or even Manhattan. Why, we might even pass one another in the street as complete strangers.”
“I get you,” said Peter. “And you don’t know him.”
“Not well enough to call him Bertie. There’s a humpbacked blighter up there who calls himself a count, and on whom I focused the old optic for about two seconds the other evening. But whether he’s the humorist who bunged the bomb or not is a different matter.” He glanced up as the door opened. “What is it, Denny?”
“I found this bag, sir, in the pocket of the coat you were wearing tonight.”
His servant came into the room carrying the chamois leather bag, which he handed to Drummond.
“Will you be wanting anything more tonight, sir?”
“No, thank you, Denny. You toddle off to bye-bye. And give Mrs. Denny a chaste salute from Mr. Darrell.”
“Very good, sir!”
The door closed behind him, and Hugh stared thoughtfully at the bag in his hand.
“I’d forgotten about this. Saw it lying on the floor, just before we hopped it. Hullo! it’s sealed.”
“For goodness’ sake be careful, boy!” cried Phyllis. “It may be another bomb.”
Hugh laughed and ripped open the bag; then his eyes slowly widened in amazement as he saw the contents.
“Great Scott!” he cried. “What the devil have we got here?”
He emptied the bag out on to the table, and for a moment or two the others stared silently at half a dozen objects that flashed and glittered with a thousand fires. Five of them were white; but the sixth—appreciably larger than the others, and they were the size of walnuts—was a wonderful rose pink.
“What on earth are they? Lumps of glass?”
With a hand that shook a little, Toby Sinclair picked one of them up and examined it.
“No, you fellows,” he muttered, “they’re diamonds!”
“Rot!” cried Hugh incredulously.
“They’re diamonds,” repeated Toby. “I happen to know something about precious stones. These are diamonds.”
“But they must be worth a lot,” said Phyllis, picking up the pink one.
“Worth a lot,” said Toby dazedly. “Worth a lot! Why, Mrs. Hugh, they are literally worth untold gold in the right market. They are absolutely priceless. I’ve never even thought of such stones. That one that you’re holding in your hand would be worth over a quarter of a million pounds, if you could get the right buyer.”
For a moment no one spoke; then Hugh laughed cheerily.
“Bang goes next month’s dress allowance, old thing!” He swept them all into the bag, and stood up. “I’m laying even money that the bomb-thrower is coughing some and then again over his bread-and-milk. This bag must have been in the desk.” His shoulders began to shake. “How frightfully funny!”
IX
In Which There Is a Stormy Supper Party at the Ritz
It was just about the time that Ginger Martin’s wife became, all unconsciously, a widow, that the sitting-room bell of a certain private suite in
