“That is so,” said the German.
Out of the corner of his eye Drummond looked at Sir Raymond, but the President of the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate was staring impassively out of the window.
“Well, I’m sorry to say the process is a dud; a failure; no bally earthly. You get me, I trust.”
“A failure. Ach! is dot so?” rumbled Scheidstrun, who was by this time completely out of his depth.
“And that being the case, Professor,” murmured Sir Raymond, “it would be better to destroy the notes at once, don’t you think? I was under the impression”—he added pointedly—“that they had already been destroyed in the accident.”
Strangely enough, the presence of Drummond gave him a feeling of confidence with Mr. Edward Blackton which he had never experienced before. And this was a golden opportunity for securing the destruction of those accursed papers, and thus preventing any possibility of his being double-crossed.
“Shall we therefore destroy them at once?” he repeated quietly.
The German fidgeted in his chair. Willingly would he have destroyed them on the spot if they had still been in his possession. Anything to be rid of his visitors. He glanced from one to the other of them. Drummond was apparently staring at the flies on the ceiling; Sir Raymond was staring at him, and his stare was full of some hidden meaning. But since it was manifestly impossible for him to do as Sir Raymond suggested, the only thing to do was to temporise.
“I fear that to destroy them I cannot,” he murmured. “At least—not yet. My duty to my dear friend …”
“Duty be damned!” snarled Sir Raymond, forgetting Drummond’s presence in his rage. This swine was trying to double-cross him after all. “You’ll destroy those notes here and now, or …”
With a great effort he pulled himself together.
“Or what?” asked Drummond mildly. “You seem strangely determined, Sir Raymond, that Professor Scheidstrun shouldn’t waste his time. Deuced praiseworthy, I call it, on your part. … Interests of science and all that. …”
Sir Raymond smothered a curse, and glared still more furiously at the German. And suddenly Drummond rose to his feet, and strolled over to the open window.
“Well, I don’t think there’s much good our waiting here,” he remarked in a bored voice. “If he wants to fool round with the process, he must. Coming, Sir Raymond?”
“In a moment or two, Captain Drummond. Don’t you wait.”
“Right. Come on, Algy. Apologies again about the nose, Professor. So long.”
He opened the door, and paused outside for Algy to join him. And every trace of boredom had vanished from his face.
“Go downstairs noisily,” he whispered. “Make a remark as if I was with you. Go out and slam the front door. Then hang about and wait for me.”
“Right,” answered the other. “But what are you going to do?”
“Listen to their conversation, old man. I have an idea it may be interesting.”
Without a sound he opened the door of the next room and went in. It was a bedroom and it was empty, and Drummond heaved a sigh of relief. The window, he knew, would be open—he had seen that as he looked out in the other room. Moreover, the square was a quiet one; he could hear easily what was being said next door by leaning out.
And for the next five minutes he leaned out, and he heard. And so engrossed was he in what he heard that he quite failed to notice a dark-skinned, sturdy man who paused abruptly on the pavement a few houses away, and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. So engrossed was he in what he heard that he even failed to hear a faint click from the door behind him a few moments later.
All he noticed was that the voices in the next room suddenly ceased, but he had heard quite enough. There was not one Scheidstrun, but two Scheidstruns, and he had assaulted the wrong one. Of Mr. Edward Blackton he had never heard; but there was only one man living who could have suggested that unmistakable trick with his hand—the man he knew as Carl Peterson. Somehow or other he had found out this mannerism of his and had used it deliberately to bluff Drummond, even as he had deliberately double-crossed the Metropolitan Diamond Syndicate. It was just the sort of thing that would appeal to his sense of humour.
So be it: they would crack a jest together over it later. At the moment he wanted a word or two with Sir Raymond Blantyre. He crossed to the door and tried to open it. But the door was locked, and the key was on the outside.
For a moment or two he stood staring at it. His mind was still busy with the staggering conversation he had been listening to, which had almost, if not quite, explained everything. Facts, disconnected before, now joined themselves together in a more or less logical sequence. Sir Raymond Blantyre’s visit to Montreux to enlist the aid of this Mr. Edward Blackton; the arrival in England of the spurious Professor Scheidstrun; the accident at Hampstead—all that part was clear now. And with regard to that accident, Drummond’s face was grim. Cold-blooded murder it must have been, in spite of all Sir Raymond’s guarded utterances on the subject.
For it had taken that gentleman ten minutes before he finally realised that the Scheidstrun he was talking to was the genuine article, and during that ten minutes he had spoken with some freedom. And then when he had finally realised it, and grasped the fact that he and his syndicate had been double-crossed, his rage had been terrible. Moreover, he had then said things which made matters even clearer to the man who was listening in the next room. Out of his own mouth he stood condemned as the instigator of an abominable crime.
But
