Lady Vennery, though very much the great lady—and why not? since she came from the chorus and there had learned to quell the presumptuous with a single glance—was very popular, too, and very busy from morning to night with social and welfare work she admitted quite frankly she would never have been able to cope with but for the help of her super-efficient secretary, Miss Thea Wood.
The distance from Midwych to Theodores was too great to be covered conveniently by cycle, so Bobby took the police car, driven by an elderly constable named Cox who had retired on pension before the war, and, to his great though concealed delight, been recalled to service exactly at the moment when pensioned leisure had begun to bore. This Sunday afternoon was warm and pleasant, the country charming, the roads clear, and in the ordinary way Bobby would have found the drive agreeable enough. But now he was feeling worried, puzzled and uneasy. Was he, he asked himself gloomily, wasting on a wild-goose chase both time, so precious in the mass of detail needing attention, and petrol, equally precious with every drop brought here at the risk of men’s lives? So very likely, he knew well, that it was all no more than the fantasy of a mischievous or imaginative boy, trying, in the old phrase, ‘to make himself important’, in the new, to relieve an inferiority complex. But also Bobby knew there were other possibilities, grim possibilities. The boy might well have stumbled on some secret, and there are secrets that can be dangerous—deadly.
At any rate there was the solid fact that Ned Bloom had vanished from his accustomed surroundings without a word of explanation or of warning. And Bobby promised himself that if Ned turned up again to-night, nosing round Theodores, if that was what his ’phone message indicated, then Mr Ned would get such a talking to as would give him good reason for a much-increased inferiority complex.
“I’ll run him in for a public mischief if he doesn’t look out,” Bobby promised himself, and composed various biting phrases calculated to cut and pierce and destroy the most complacent.
They passed through Eddington village, whence the old Labois had taken their title, past the ancient church where so many of them lay in marble effigy. Soon they came to where once great iron gates—now sacrificed to the exigencies of war—had guarded the entrance to the Theodores grounds. A long, straight drive provided a fine vista, with the house itself at the end of the avenue of magnificent old elms. An imposing place it looked, in the late Georgian style, the façade framed in tall doric columns and a really fine front entrance approached by a great flight of polished stone steps flanked by marble balustrades ending in the wyvern that was the Labois crest. Altogether a stately, indeed magnificent whole, a reminder of the days when a lord was still a lord and not merely an interesting historic memory.
The car stopped before the imposing entrance. Bobby descended, feeling that he ought to have arrived in a post chaise and four with a couple of postillions or so. An old man in dingy overalls appeared and called:
“Round to the right if you want the door.”
“Isn’t this it?” Bobby asked, surprised.
“We don’t use that no more,” said the ancient, “not now. Haven’t the staff for it. It’s round to the right.”
He vanished. Bobby obeyed, relinquishing regretfully the prospect of a magnificent approach up that imposing flight of steps and through those great doors to a waiting butler and, no doubt, as he had once read in a most amiable American poem, “row upon row of tall young footmen”. On the right, as instructed, he found another and a smaller door, a sort of poor relation of a door, almost a plebeian door, indeed. When he knocked there appeared a maid, to whom he gave his official card, explaining that he wished to see Lord Vennery on business. He was asked to wait, and then was conducted to a larger room, the modern boudoir, with feminine knick-knacks on the top of a card-index cabinet, a telephone concealed under a fascinating doll in crinoline, a table covered with neatly arranged piles of papers and documents kept in place by little goblin paper-weights, two or three shelves of reference books half hidden by dainty curtains, a typewriter in colour to match the general scheme. Altogether a satisfying and slightly alarming presentation of mingled femininity and efficiency. In front of the fireplace stood an elderly, rather carelessly dressed woman, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. At the typewriter sat the perfect picture of the confidential secretary, punctuality, reliability and no nonsense radiating from every inch of her small person, from her cropped head to her stockingless legs and her sandals with wooden soles.
Bobby guessed these must be Lady Vennery and her secretary, the Miss Thea Wood who had written the note sent on to him from Scotland Yard. It also struck him that the atmosphere seemed a trifle frigid. Lady Vennery announced her name, explained that her husband was occupied at the moment, and managed to convey that she was faintly surprised by Bobby’s appearance, which was quite unexpected. Bobby asked if there was any misunderstanding? He had received a letter sent on to him from London. He had acknowledged it, he said, and Miss Thea Wood interposed to say they had heard nothing beyond a formal printed note saying that the matter would have attention.
“Well, that’s why I’m here,” Bobby said, slightly annoyed. “To give the matter attention.”
“It didn’t sound as if you were bothering yourselves much,” said Lady Vennery. “Lord Vennery said it was more bureaucracy. Passing the buck from Scotland Yard to Midwych and back again, most likely. Dodging responsibility. He said we had better forget it.”
Bobby understood now. The Vennerys were so important and so used to being so regarded that they had considered a mere printed acknowledgement as insufficient. Gross negligence it had seemed to them. He ought to have come in person at once; or, at the very least, have written a long letter, expressing concern and giving full details of what was intended. A mere promise to “give the matter attention” had displeased. Very likely they had taken precautions themselves. Very likely there had been a decision to lodge a complaint if anything did happen. Possibly even there was a touch of disappointment that a senior police officer had in fact arrived on the scene. No one likes to be deprived of a grievance.
“Well, we didn’t forget it,” Bobby said tartly. “Perhaps just as well you did, though. The less said the better if there is mischief on foot. Nothing to do with Scotland Yard, though. Scotland Yard is County of London. This is Wychshire.”
He asked one or two questions about the ’phone call, and learned no more than Miss Wood’s original letter had conveyed. The call had been taken by one of the maids. At first it had been supposed that some one was trying to be funny. But it was the fact that the date given was one when several important people would be assembled at Theodores, and so Lord Vennery had said that it might be just as well to let Scotland Yard know. Lady Vennery’s tone made it clear that in her opinion Scotland Yard, no matter what Bobby might think or say, was the proper department to concern itself about the affairs of the Right Hon. Lord Vennery.
“Very probably,” Bobby agreed, “it was only some one trying to be funny, but you never know, and it is also a fact that some specially cheeky—and successful—jewel robberies have taken place recently. We are very anxious to clear them up. A new operator, we think. Certainly some one who has never been through our hands.”
“Lord Vennery mentioned that,” said Lady Vennery, still severe. “It’s why he thought we had better do something. He said no arrests had been made, none of the jewellery recovered. I don’t think he seemed much impressed by the efficiency of the police.”
“People seldom are,” Bobby admitted. “Impressed by their own efficiency all right, but not by other people’s. About your house-party this week-end. Is it a big one?”
“Hardly a house-party,” Lady Vennery corrected him. “Lord Vennery has asked some of his business associates for the week-end to talk over post-war business problems. Preparing for the return to normalcy.”
Bobby winced. ‘Normalcy’ was a word that hurt. Privately, too, he thought that to wish to return to the pre-war normal was like an adult wishi
ng to return to childhood. However, that was no affair of his, nor did he suppose that the course of events would be very much affected by the chatter of elderly rich men. He said:
“I take it that even if it’s to be chiefly a business discussion, some of Lord Vennery’s friends will have brought their wives? And some of the ladies will have brought their jewellery?”
Lady Vennery looked at Miss Wood. That young lady said briskly:
“One is a bachelor, one is divorced—at present. Two have brought their wives. One has brought her husband. One is a widow. She is Mrs Carlyle. Mrs Armitage has brought her diamonds as well as her husband. Lady Vere had the bed covered with jewels when I was in her room just now. It looked like a pre-war Bond Street jeweller’s. Mrs Carlyle was wearing the Arlington sapphires. I don’t wonder they are famous.”
CHAPTER XVII
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT
“THE ARLINGTON SAPPHIRES,” Bobby repeated, suddenly excited, for was it possible that thus unexpectedly, almost casually, he had stumbled on the clue he needed whereby to link together these recent happenings?
“Are they real?” Lady Vennery was asking. “I didn’t think they could be, not that size.”
“Why are they famous?” Bobby asked.
“Oh, they are real,” Miss Wood said, answering her employer first. “Overpowering. Nature must have been in her most vulgar mood when she produced them. They are famous, partly for their size, partly for their history. A Portuguese captain brought them from Burma in the sixteenth century. He was burned alive for heresy—or else for refusing to give them up. From the Inquisition, who had arranged the burning, they passed to an Italian Cardinal. Moors—pirates from Algiers—burnt the Cardinal alive in his church and went off with the sapphires. One of the captives in Algiers was an Englishman, Sir Gervase Arlington, a slave in the house of the captain of the Moors. He and some others captured with him rose suddenly, burnt the Moorish captain alive in his house, and escaped with the sapphires. Sir Gervase was the only one of the party who reached England. The others died on the way, with or without assistance from Sir Gervase. Anyhow, no one was left to dispute his ownership, and the sapphires remained in the Arlington family until recently—heirlooms under entail, so they couldn’t be sold. At least, every one thought so, till somebody discovered that through some slip of a lawyer’s clerk, a hundred years ago, only the necklace was specified as an heirloom. So the earrings and the pendant could be sold. There’s a story that an Argentine millionaire offered some enormous sum for the full set—earrings, pendant, necklace. When he couldn’t have the necklace he sulked and said he wouldn’t have any. So Mr Carlyle stepped in and bought the earrings and pendant over the Argentine’s head. Made him furious, and he tried to buy from the Carlyles, but they wouldn’t part. The story is he still wants to buy, and now Mr Carlyle is dead he is waiting for Mrs Carlyle to go bankrupt or something. They are rather a responsibility to have in the house.”
Lady Vennery looked at Bobby with a proud air. She had exactly the manner of the mother showing off a precocious child, or of a schoolmaster exhibiting a prize pupil.
“Miss Wood always knows all about things,” she said.
Miss Wood contrived to look both modest and intolerably efficient. Bobby regarded her with disapproval, and mentally thanked Heaven there were so many things of which his Olive knew absolutely nothing. Mere masculine jealousy, of course.
He asked a few more questions, and then explained that he would like permission to remain in the grounds near the house for a time, so as to keep watch until dark.
“Dinner-time is generally the zero hour for burglaries, you know,” he said. “Every one at table and the servants all fussed. If the ’phone message you had means something, and wasn’t merely an attempt to be funny, whatever it is will probably come off then.”
He also asked if he could be shown over the first floor, so as to make himself acquainted with the lay-out of the rooms and passages.
“Just in case,” he explained, “any one manages to get indoors without our seeing him. Unlikely, because the first thing any professional does is to make sure of his retreat by trip lines on the lawn or some dodge of that sort, and that ought to give him away.”
“You seem to know all about it,” remarked Lady Vennery in rather a dissatisfied tone, and she looked across at her secretary in a way and with an expression Bobby did not at all understand.
Perhaps almost disappointed, she and her secretary both, that the police authorities they had made up their minds were inefficient were proving attentive and competent. Unreasonable, of course, but, then, people did on the whole tend to be slightly unreasonable.
However, no objection was raised to granting his request, and the efficient Miss Wood undertook to act as guide. As she led the way upstairs he asked about the domestic staff, and learned that the butler was now the only inside man servant. There were also two aged gardeners, long since pensioned off, but now returned to grow tomatoes in the erstwhile orchid house, potatoes in the former rose-garden. The butler, too, was well over sixty, explained Miss Wood, with that touch of pitying contempt for age which has replaced the reverence youth was once expected to show, though probably never feeling it.
“Not much good for tackling burglars, if that’s what you’re hoping,” pronounced Miss Wood.
Apparently lest this might discourage him too much, she added a promise that she would have a poker hidden ready so that she herself could come to his help if any “bust up”—her expression—did take place.
Bobby thanked her gravely, and under her guidance got a good idea of the geography of the first floor. He learned also that there were three stairways: the great central stairs, ornate and magnificent, not much used for the moment, as it debouched on the great closed front entrance; the backstairs used by the staff; the garden stairs, so called because they led directly to the door by which Bobby had entered. At present these stairs were the most convenient and nearest communicating link between the bedrooms and the rooms now in use on the ground floor, where most of the larger ceremonial apartments had been shut up “for the duration”. He asked Miss Wood which was the room occupied by Mrs Carlyle, and after she had shown it him and they were walking back along a passage he noticed a smell of tobacco.
“Some one in there smoking a cigarette,” he remarked, indicating a door. “Will that be one of the guests?”
“That’s my room,” she told him abruptly. “No one’s there,” and she hurried on along the passage towards the stairs.
Bobby had to follow her. None of his business, he supposed, if she did not wish him to know who it was. It couldn’t be the hypothetical housebreaker, he supposed. She had run downstairs already, and was waiting for him in the passage below. He thanked her for her guidance, declined politely an offer of refreshment, and, returning to the waiting Cox in the car outside, drove back to Eddington police station, where he had some arrangements to make, as the village constable, a youngish man named Adams, had received his call-up papers and would have to be replaced—by whom Bobby had no idea, as the force was already combed out to the limit. He supposed gloomily that he was expected to call a substitute from the vasty deep, and if none came then he would be held responsible.
However, that was merely a normal war-time headache. Adams had been warned by ’phone to keep a sharp look-out for any stranger seen in the neighbourhood. But Bobby was much inclined to suspect that in the bustle and excitement of preparations for departure these instructions had not been carried out with any marked zeal. A weeping wife, three awestruck children and many solemn farewell visits from neighbours had probably pushed police duty into the background.
No good saying anything to a man who in a few hours would care nothing for inspectors or superintendents, however much he might be learning to tremble before corporals and sergeants. So Bobby went to the village public-house, where he dined on bread and cheese. There he learned that shortly before his own arrival a motor-cyclist had passed through the village a
nd had inquired the way to Theodores, which apparently he knew had to be asked for as Tedders. Unfortunately Bobby could get only the vaguest, most general personal description of this stranger, as neither of the two men to whom he had spoken could be found at the moment.
Bobby wondered to himself if this meant that Ned Bloom had put in an appearance at last. Nothing to show it was actually Ned, of course, but the possibility remained.
His bread and cheese finished, Bobby went back to the cottage that served both as police station and as residence, tore a reluctant Adams from a justly indignant wife and solemn children wondering more than ever what all the fuss was about, placed him and Cox at what seemed the most suitable strategic points to cover all approaches to Theodores, hired a small boy to act as liaison officer, parked the car near the entrance to the drive, where once those great iron gates had stood, so that it might be ready for instant pursuit if necessary.
For his own share he had given himself a roving commission, and as he kept watch, he found himself wondering again whether the sudden appearance of the Arlington sapphires in all this tangle of events and possibilities was pure coincidence, or whether there was some connection with Ned Bloom’s ’phone call or with that note “Follow this up” made by him on the newspaper cutting about the disappearance of Sir Gervase Arlington. And was it the disappearance of the Admiral or the whereabouts of the sapphires that Ned’s note referred to? He wondered, too, whether that super-efficient secretary, Miss Thea Wood, had the history of all famous jewels by heart, or whether there was some special reason why she knew so much about these sapphires?
Then he saw Miss Wood herself coming briskly towards the house. She had changed her attire, and was wearing now a close-fitting dinner-gown, which somehow seemed to suit her less, as if she had fallen in significance from the necessary secretary to the mere superfluous dinner guest. She had thrown a light-coloured scarf or wrap of some sort over her shoulders, and as Bobby watched she took it off, held it up for a moment, as if wondering how to readjust it—or was it possible she was making a signal?—and then draped it to cover not only her shoulders, but her Eton-cropped head.
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