"Oh, dear!" murmured Lady Jane, aghast. "It--it isn"t Mr. de Bosky, Eric. It"s that man."
"I beg your pardon, Lord Temple," said Mr. Alfred Chambers, setting the lantern down in order to brush the dust off of his hands. "Are you there?"
"What is the meaning of this, sir?" demanded the young man on the beam, blinking rapidly in the unaccustomed glare.
Mr. Chambers rested his elbows on the ledge. The light of the lantern shone full on his face, revealing the slow but sure growth of a joyous grin.
"Permit me to introduce myself, your lordship. Mr. Alfred Chambers, of--"
"I know,--I know!" broke in the other impatiently. "What the devil do you want?"
"Good evening, Miss Emsdale," said Mr. Chambers, remembering his manners. "That is to say,--your ladyship. "Pon my word, you can"t possibly be more surprised than I am,--either of you. I shouldn"t have dreamed of looking in this--this stuffy hole for--for anything except bats." He chortled.
"I can"t understand why some one below there doesn"t knock that ladder from under you," said Mr. Trotter rudely.
"I was on the point of giving up in despair," went on Mr. Chambers, unoffended. "You know, I shouldn"t have thought of looking up here for you."
His quarry bethought himself of the loyal, conspiring friends below.
"See here, Mr. Chambers," he began earnestly, "I want you to understand that those gentlemen downstairs are absolutely innocent of any criminal complicity in--"
"I understand perfectly," interrupted the man from Scotland Yard.
"Perfectly. And the same applies to her ladyship. Everything"s as right as rain, your lordship. Will you be so good, sir, as to come down at once?"
"Certainly," cried the other. "With the greatest pleasure. Come, Jane,--"
"Wait!" protested Jane. "I sha"n"t move an inch until he promises to--to listen to reason. In the first place, this gentleman is a Mr. Trotter,"
she went on rapidly, addressing the head and shoulders behind the lantern. "You will get yourself into a jolly lot of trouble if you--"
"Thanks, Jane dear," interrupted her lover gently. "It"s no use. He knows I am Eric Temple,--so we"ll just have to make the best of it."
"He doesn"t know anything of the kind," said she. "He noticed a resemblance, that"s all."
Mr. Chambers beamed.
"Quite so, your ladyship. I noticed it at once. If I do say it myself, there isn"t a man in the department who has anything on me when it comes to that sort of thing. The inspector has frequently mentioned--"
"By the way, Mr. Snooper, will you be kind enough to--"
"Chambers, your lordship," interrupted the detective.
"Kind enough to explain how you discovered that we were up here?"
"Well, you see we were having our coffee,--after a most excellent dinner, your lordship, prepared, I am bound to say, for your discussion by the estimable Mr. Bramble,--"
"Dinner? By George, you remind me that I am ravenously hungry. It must be quite late."
"Half-past eight, sir,--approximately. As I was saying, we were enjoying our coffee,--the three of us only,--"
Trotter made a wry face. "In that case, Mrs. Millidew will sack me in the morning, Jane. I had orders for eight sharp."
"It really shouldn"t matter, your lordship," said Mr. Chambers cheerfully. "Not in the least, if I may be so bold as to say so.
However, to continue, sir. Or rather, to go back a little if I may. You see, I was rather certain you were hiding somewhere about the place. At least, I was certain her ladyship was. She came in and she didn"t go out, if you see what I mean. I insisted on my right to search the premises. Do you follow me, sir?"
"Reluctantly."
"In due time, I came to the little dining-room, where I discovered the cook preparing dinner. You were not in evidence, your ladyship. I do not mind in the least confessing that I was ordered out by the cook. I retired to the clock-shop of M. Mirabeau and sat down to wait. The Polish young gentleman was there. As time went on, Mr. Bramble joined us. They were extremely ill-at-ease, your lordship, although they tried very hard to appear amused and unconcerned. The slightest noise caused them to fidget. Once, to test them, I stealthily dropped my pocket knife on the floor. Now, you would say, wouldn"t you, that so small an object as a pen-knife--but that"s neither here nor there. They jumped,--every blessed one of them. Presently the young Polish gentleman, whose face is strangely familiar to me,--I must have seen him in London,--announced that he was obliged to depart. A little later on,--you see, it was quite dark by this time,--the clockmaker prepared to close up for the night.
Mr. Bramble looked at his watch two or three times in rapid succession, notwithstanding the fact that he was literally surrounded by clocks. He said he feared he would have to go and see about the dinner,--and would I kindly get out. I--"
"They should have called in the police," interrupted his male listener indignantly. "That"s what I should have done, confound your impudence."
"Ah, now _there_ is a point I should have touched upon before,"
explained Mr. Chambers, casting an uneasy glance down into the room below. "I may as well confess to you,--quite privately and confidentially, of course, your lordship,--that I--er--rather deceived the old gentlemen. Do not be alarmed. I am quite sure they can"t hear what I am saying. You see. I told them in the beginning that I had surrounded the place with policemen and plain-clothes men. They--"
"And hadn"t you?" demanded Mr. Trotter quickly, a reckless light appearing in his eyes.
"Not at all, sir,--not at all. Why should I? I am quite capable of handling the case single-handed. The less the police had to do with it the better for all parties concerned. Still, it was necessary to frighten them a little. Otherwise, they _might_ have ejected me--er--bodily, if you know what I mean. Or, for that matter, they might have called in the police, as you suggest. So I kept them from doing either by giving them to understand that if there was to be any calling of the police it would be I who would do it with my little whistle."
He paused to chuckle.
"You are making a long story of it," growled Mr. Trotter.
"I beg your pardon, sir. The interruptions, you see,--ahem! I followed Mr. Bramble to the dining-room. He was very nervous. He coughed a great deal, and very loudly. I was quite convinced that you were secreted somewhere about the place, but, for the life of me, I couldn"t imagine where."
"I suppose it hadn"t occurred to you that we might have gone down the back stairway and escaped into the side-street," said Mr. Trotter sarcastically.
Mr. Chambers cleared his throat and seemed curiously embarra.s.sed.
"Perhaps I should have stated before that a--er--a chap from a local agency was posted at the bottom of the kitchen stairway,--as a favour to me, so to speak. A chap who had been detailed to a.s.sist me,--But I shall explain all that in my report. So, you see, you couldn"t have gone out that way without--Yes, yes,--as I was saying, I accompanied Mr. Bramble to the dining-room. The cook was in a very bad temper. The dinner was getting cold. I observed that three places had been laid. Fixing my eye upon Mr. Bramble I inquired who the third place was for. I shall never forget his expression, nor the admirable way in which he recovered himself. He was quite wonderful. He said it was for _me_. Rather neat of him, wasn"t it?"
"You don"t mean to say you had the bra.s.s to--Well, "pon my soul, Chambers, that _was_ going it a bit strong."
"Under the circ.u.mstances, your lordship, I couldn"t very well decline,"
said Mr. Chambers apologetically. "He is such a decent, loyal old chap, sir, that it would have been cruel to let him see that I knew he was lying."
"But, confound you, that was _my_ dinner," exclaimed Trotter wrathfully.
"So I suspected, your lordship. I knew it _couldn"t_ be her ladyship"s.
Well, we had got on to the coffee, and I was just on the point of asking Mr. Bramble for the loan of an umbrella, when there was a loud thump on the ceiling overhead. An instant later a large piece of plaster fell to the floor, not three feet behind my chair. I--"
"By Jove! What a pity it didn"t fall three feet nearer," exclaimed Trotter, a note of regret in his voice.
Mr. Chambers generously overlooked the remark.
"After that it was plain sailing," said he, quite pleasantly. "Now you know how I came to discover you, and how I happen to be here."
"And those poor old dears," cried Lady Jane in distress; "where are they? What have you done to them?"
"They are--" he looked downward again before answering--"yes, they are holding the ladder for me. Coming, gentlemen!" he called out. "We"ll all be down in a jiffy."