Recovering from my amazement, I stood for a minute or two watching him.

How delightful he looked when asleep like that, and what a strong resemblance he bore to Dulcie. But how came he to be here? And how came Dulcie to have told me, less than an hour before, that he was in the house at Hampstead, and asleep there? Gazing down upon him still, I wondered what really had happened since I had last seen him that evening, and what story he would have to tell me when he awoke.

My man had gone to bed, for it was now past midnight. Considering where I had better put d.i.c.k to sleep, my glance rested upon some letters lying on the table. Mechanically I picked them up and looked at the handwritings on the envelopes. Nothing of interest, I decided, and I was about to put them down again, unopened, when I noticed there was one from Holt that I had overlooked. The handwriting was Sir Roland's.

Hastily tearing open the envelope, I pulled out the letter. It was quite short, but its contents sent my heart jumping into my mouth, and had d.i.c.k not been asleep close by in the chair I believe I should have used some almost unprintable language.

"Oh, the fool--the silly, doddering, abject old fool!" I exclaimed aloud as I flung the open letter down on to the table and began to pace the room in a fury of indignation. "'No fool like an old fool'--oh, those words of wisdom--the man who first uttered them should have a monument erected to his memory," I continued aloud; then suddenly, as d.i.c.k stirred in his sleep, I checked myself abruptly.

The letter Sir Roland Challoner had written to me ran as follows:

"My dear Mike,--As you and Dulcie are engaged, I dare say you will be interested, and you may be surprised, to hear of another engagement. I have asked Dulcie's beautiful friend, Mrs. Stapleton, to become my wife, and she has done me the honour of accepting my proposal. Write to congratulate me, my dear Mike, and come down again soon to stay with us.

"Yours affectionately,

"ROLAND CHALLONER."

CHAPTER XIX

"IN THE PAPERS"

d.i.c.k was sleeping so heavily that he hardly stirred when I picked him up, carried him into my bedroom, laid him on my bed and loosened his clothes; I had decided to sleep on the settee in the room adjoining.

Soon after seven next morning I was awakened by hearing him moving about. He had made himself quite at home, I found, for he had had a bath and used my towels and hair-brushes and found his way into a pair of my slippers.

"I hope you don't mind," he said apologetically, after telling me what he had done. "And now shall I tell you how I come to be here, Mike?" he added, clambering up on to my bed and lying down beside me.

I told him I wanted to know everything, and at once, and, speaking in his rapid, vivacious way, he went on to explain exactly what had occurred.

It seemed that when he went and stood by Doris Lorrimer under the clock at Paddington station, she had, as I had told him she probably would, asked him if he were d.i.c.k Challoner. Upon his telling her that he was, she said that she had been sent to meet him, and asked him to come with her. She had not told him where they were going, but when she got out at Baker Street station and he got out after her, a man had suddenly come up to her and said he wished to speak to her privately. She had told d.i.c.k to wait, and had then walked a little way away with the man, and for about ten minutes they had stood together, conversing in undertones.

"What was the man like?" I interrupted.

d.i.c.k described him rather minutely--he said he had taken special notice of his appearance "because he was such a hairy man"--and before he had done I felt practically certain the man who had met Doris Lorrimer was the foreign-looking man who had shadowed Preston, Jack, and myself the night before.

"I think," d.i.c.k went on, "the lady altered her plans after meeting that man; because for some moments after he had gone she seemed undecided what to do. Finally she went out of the station, hailed a taxi in Baker Street, told me to get into it, and then said something to the driver that I couldn't hear. We went straight down Baker Street, down Orchard Street--I noticed the names of both streets--then turned to the right and stopped at a house in c.u.mberland Place. As you had disappeared, I was beginning to feel a bit frightened, Mike,--I didn't much like the woman, who had spoken hardly a word to me all the time,--so just as she got out of the taxi on the left side, I quickly opened the door on the right side, popped out while her back was still turned, and ran away as hard as I could, leaving my suit-case in the taxi. It was very dark, and I believe that until after she had paid the driver she can't have missed me, as n.o.body came after me."

"Well, and what did you do then?"

"As soon as I had got well away, I went up to a policeman and asked him the way to South Molton Street. He explained clearly, and I came straight on here and asked for you. Your man, Simon, said you weren't in, and that he didn't know when you would be, so I asked if I might come in and wait, as I said I had something important to say to you. Of course he knew me by sight from seeing me with you sometimes, so he said 'Certainly,' and put me into your sitting-room. It was past eight when I got here. I was awfully hungry, so I ate all the cake and all the biscuits I found in the sideboard in your dining-room, and then I sat down in your big chair to wait for you--and I suppose I then fell asleep."

This report interested me a good deal, and I was still pondering it when my man came in with my letters and the newspaper, which he always brought to me before I got up. After reading my letters I picked up the newspaper, telling d.i.c.k to lie still and not disturb me until I had glanced through it. I had read the princ.i.p.al items of news, when suddenly my attention became centred upon an article which was headed:

AMAZING SERIES OF ROBBERIES POLICE COMPLETELY BAFFLED

The article made up nearly a column of closely set type, and ran as follows:

Within a brief period of three months, that is to say since the beginning of December last, no less than eleven great robberies have been committed in various parts of Great Britain. Up to the present, however, no clue of any sort has been obtained that seems likely to lead to the discovery of the perpetrators of any one of these crimes. The victims of these robberies are the following:

Here followed a list of names of eleven well-known rich people; the names of the houses where the robberies had been committed; a brief description of the method employed by the thieves; and the value, approximately, of the property stolen in each case. The houses were for the most part large country mansions situated in counties far apart, and "Holt Manor, Sir Roland Challoner's seat in Berkshire," figured in the list. The article then continued:

When eleven such serious robberies, as we may rightly term them, are committed in comparatively rapid succession, and our police and detective force, in spite of their vaunted ability, prove themselves unable to effect a single arrest, what, we have a right to ask, is amiss with our police, or with their methods, or with both?

Questioned upon the subject, a well-known Scotland Yard Inspector yesterday informed our representative that official opinion inclines to the belief that the crimes mentioned have one and all been effected by a group of amazingly clever criminals working in combination. "How many members the gang consists of," he said, "how they obtained the special information they must have possessed to enable them to locate so accurately the exact whereabouts of the valuables they seized, and how they succeeded in securing those valuables in broad daylight, we have not the remotest notion. The theory held at present," he continued, "is that a number of expert thieves have by some means succeeded in becoming intimate with the owners of the houses that have been robbed. We repudiate entirely the theory that servants in the different houses must have been accomplices in the robberies either directly or indirectly."

The article then proceeded to advance a number of apparently plausible theories to account for the non-discovery of the thieves, and finally ended as follows:

If, then, our police and detectives would retain, or rather regain, their prestige, it is inc.u.mbent upon them at once to take steps to prevent any further outrages of this kind. Otherwise the police of Great Britain will run a grave risk of becoming the laughing-stock of Continental countries, where, we make bold to state, such a series of robberies, all more or less of the same nature, and involving a loss of, in the aggregate, approximately 50,000, would not thus have been committed with impunity.

I handed d.i.c.k the paper. When he had carefully read the article right through, he looked up abruptly.

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "I have an idea!"

I waited. For some moments he was silent. Then he continued:

"Do you remember the account of the robbery at Thatched Court, near Bridport? It's one of the robberies mentioned in this list."

"I can't say I do," I answered. "I don't read the newspapers very carefully. Why?"

"I happened to read that account, and remember it rather well. The robbery took place about five weeks ago--the house was entered while everybody, including some of the servants, was at a race-meeting. Among the things stolen was a pair of shot-guns made by Holland and Holland."

"But what on earth has that to do with anything? Where does the 'idea'

come in?"

"It doesn't come in--there. It comes in later. You know that every shot-gun has a number on it, and so can be identified. Now, if these thieves are people who are pretending to be gentlemen--how do you put it? There's a word you use for that, but I've forgotten it."

"Do you mean masquerading as gentlemen?"

"Masquerading--that's the word I was thinking of; if they are masquerading as gentlemen they'll probably keep good guns like that to shoot with--they can do that, or think they can, without running much risk, whereas if they sold them they'd run rather a big risk of being caught, because I happen to remember that the numbers of the stolen guns were mentioned in the newspaper account of the robbery. They said the guns were in a case, and almost new. Now, this is where my idea 'comes in,' as you put it. I heard you tell Dulcie only the other day that you wanted a pair of guns by a tip-top maker. Just afterwards I happened to hear her talking to Mrs. Stapleton about her wedding--by the way, Mike, have you fixed the date yet?"

"Not yet. But what about Mrs. Stapleton?"

"Well, Dulcie spoke about wedding presents, just casually in course of conversation, and I heard her tell Mrs. Stapleton that you had said you hoped among your wedding presents there would be a good gun, 'or, better still, a pair,' I heard her say that you said. Mrs. Stapleton didn't answer at once, but I noticed a queer sort of expression come on to her face, as if she'd just thought of something, and presently she said: 'I have a good mind, darling, to give him a pair of guns that belonged to my poor husband. They are quite new--he can't have used them more than once or twice, if that. They were made by a Bond Street gun-maker he always went to, one of the best in London.' Mike, is Holland and Holland's shop in Bond Street?"

"Yes," I answered, "at the top of Bond Street. Oh, but there are several good gun-makers in Bond Street. Besides, why should Mrs. Stapleton give me such a present as that? I really hardly know her."

"Wait until I've finished, Mike, you always jump at conclusions so.

Dulcie said almost at once: 'Oh, don't do that, Connie. Mike wouldn't expect such a present as that from you. He mightn't like to take it; you see, you hardly know him really'--just what you have this moment said.

Then Dulcie said: 'I tell you what I wish you would do, Connie--let me buy them from you to give to him. What shall I give you for them?' I believe that was what Mrs. Stapleton had been driving at all the time--she wanted to sell the guns without running any risk, for of course you would never think of noticing the numbers on them, and n.o.body would ever suppose that guns given to you by Dulcie, apparently new guns, were guns that had been stolen. In the end Dulcie said she would give Mrs. Stapleton eighty pounds for the pair, and that was agreed upon, so that Dulcie has practically bought them for you, in fact she may have paid Mrs. Stapleton for them already. Now look here, I'll get hold of that newspaper that gave the numbers of the guns, and I bet you when Dulcie gives you those guns you'll find they're marked with the numbers of the stolen guns."

"d.i.c.k," I said thoughtfully, after a moment's pause, "were you eavesdropping when you heard all this?"

"Why, no, of course not!" he exclaimed indignantly. "I was in the room, reading a book, and I couldn't help hearing all they said, though they were talking in undertones."

I turned over in my bed, and looked into his eyes for an instant or two.

"Would you be surprised to hear, d.i.c.k," I said slowly, watching to see what effect my words would have upon him, "would you be surprised to hear that Dulcie gave me a pair of guns, as her wedding present, only last week?"