"At eleven o'clock van Heerden came back," resumed Milsom, "and if ever a man was panic-stricken it was he--the long and the short of it is that the code was mislaid."

"Mislaid!" Beale was staggered.

Here was farce interpolated into tragedy--the most grotesque, the most unbelievable farce.

"Mislaid," said Milsom. "He did not say as much, but I gathered from the few disjointed words he flung at me that the code was not irredeemably lost; in fact, I have reason to believe that he knows where it is. It was after that that van Heerden started in to do some tall cursing of me, my country, my decadent race and the like. Things have been strained all the afternoon. To-night they reached a climax. He wanted me to help him in a burglary--and burglary is not my forte."

"What did he want to burgle?" asked McNorton, with professional interest.

"Ah! There you have me! It was the question I asked and he refused to answer. I was to put myself in his hands and there was to be some shooting if, as he thought likely, a caretaker was left on the premises to be entered. I told him flat--we were sitting on Wandsworth Common at the time--that he could leave me out, and that is where we became mutually offensive."

He looked at his maimed hand.

"I dressed it roughly at a chemist's. The iodine open dressing isn't beautiful, but it is antiseptic. He shot to kill, too, there's no doubt about that. A very perfect little gentleman!"

"He's in London?" said McNorton. "That simplifies matters."

"To my mind it complicates rather than simplifies," said Beale. "London is a vast proposition. Can you give us any idea as to the hour the burglary was planned for?"

"Eleven," said Milsom promptly, "that is to say, in a little over an hour's time."

"And you have no idea of the locality?"

"Somewhere in the East of London. We were to have met at Aldgate."

"I don't understand it," said McNorton. "Do you suggest that the code is in the hands of somebody who is not willing to part with it? And now that he no longer needs it for you, is there any reason why he should wait?"

"Every reason," replied Milsom, and Stanford Beale nodded in agreement.

"It was not only for me he wanted it. He as good as told me that unless he recovered it he would be unable to communicate with his men."

"What do you think he'll do?"

"He'll get Bridgers to assist him. Bridgers is a pretty sore man, and the doctor knows just where he can find him."

As Oliva listened an idea slowly dawned in her mind that she might supply a solution to the mystery of the missing code. It was a wildly improbable theory she held, but even so slender a possibility was not to be discarded. She slipped from the group and went back to her room. For the accommodation of his ward, James Kitson had taken the adjoining suite to his own and had secured a lady's maid from an agency for the girl's service. She passed through the sitting-room to her own bedroom, and found the maid putting the room ready for the night.

"Minnie," she said, throwing a quick glance about the apartment, "where did you put the clothes I took off when I came?"

"Here, miss."

The girl opened the wardrobe and Oliva made a hurried search.

"Did you find--anything, a little ticket?"

The girl smiled.

"Oh yes, miss. It was in your stocking."

Oliva laughed.

"I suppose you thought it was rather queer, finding that sort of thing in a girl's stocking," she asked, but the maid was busily opening the drawers of the dressing-table in search of something.

"Here it is, miss."

She held a small square ticket in her hand and held it with such disapproving primness that Oliva nearly laughed.

"I found it in your stocking, miss," she said again.

"Quite right," said Oliva coolly, "that's where I put it. I always carry my pawn tickets in my stocking."

The admirable Minnie sniffed.

"I suppose you have never seen such a thing," smiled Oliva, "and you hardly knew what it was."

The lady's maid turned very red. She had unfortunately seen many such certificates of penury, but all that was part of her private life, and she had been shocked beyond measure to be confronted with this too-familiar evidence of impecuniosity in the home of a lady who represented to her an assured income and comfortable pickings.

Oliva went back to her sitting-room and debated the matter. It was a sense of diffidence, the fear of making herself ridiculous, which arrested her. Otherwise she might have flown into the room, declaimed her preposterous theories and leave these clever men to work out the details. She opened the door and with the ticket clenched in her hand stepped into the room.

If they had missed her after she had left nobody saw her return. They were sitting in a group about the table, firing questions at the big unshaven man who had made such a dramatic entrance to the conference and who, with a long cigar in the corner of his mouth, was answering readily and fluently.

But faced with the tangible workings of criminal investigation her resolution and her theories shrank to vanishing-point. She clasped the ticket in her hand and felt for a pocket, but the dressmaker had not provided her with that useful appendage.

So she turned and went softly back to her room, praying that she would not be noticed. She closed the door gently behind her and turned to meet a well-valeted man in evening-dress who was standing in the middle of the room, a light overcoat thrown over his arm, his silk hat tilted back from his forehead, a picture of calm assurance.

"Don't move," said van Heerden, "and don't scream. And be good enough to hand over the pawn ticket you are holding in your hand."

Silently she obeyed, and as she handed the little pasteboard across the table which separated them she looked past him to the bookshelf behind his head, and particularly to a new volume which bore the name of Stanford Beale.

CHAPTER XXX

THE WATCH

"Thanks," said van Heerden, pocketing the ticket, "it is of no use to me now, for I cannot wait. I gather that you have not disclosed the fact that this ticket is in your possession."

"I don't know how you gather that," she said.

"Lower your voice!" he hissed menacingly. "I gather as much because Beale knew the ticket would not be in my possession now. If he only knew, if he only had a hint of its existence, I fear my scheme would fail. As it is, it will succeed. And now," he said with a smile, "time is short and your preparations must be of the briefest. I will save you the trouble of asking questions by telling you that I am going to take you along with me. I certainly cannot afford to leave you. Get your coat."

With a shrug she walked past him to the bedroom and he followed.

"Are we going far?" she asked.

There was no tremor in her voice and she felt remarkably self-possessed.