success.”
It was not often that McEachern was visited by ideas. He ran rather
to muscle than to brain. But he had one that evening during dinner.
His interview with Jimmy had left him furious, but baffled. He knew
that his hands were tied. Frontal attack was useless. To drive Jimmy
from the castle would be out of the question. All that could be done
was to watch him while he was there. For he had never been more
convinced of anything in his life than that Jimmy had wormed his way
into the house-party with felonious intent. The appearance of Lady
Julia at dinner, wearing the famous rope of diamonds, supplied an
obvious motive. The necklace had an international reputation.
Probably, there was not a prominent thief in England or on the
Continent who had not marked it down as a possible prey. It had
already been tried for, once. It was big game, just the sort of lure
that would draw the type of criminal McEachern imagined Jimmy to be.
From his seat at the far end of the table, Jimmy looked at the
jewels as they gleamed on their wearer’s neck. They were almost too
ostentatious for what was, after all, an informal dinner. It was not
a rope of diamonds. It was a collar. There was something Oriental
and barbaric in the overwhelming display of jewelry. It was a prize
for which a thief would risk much.
The conversation, becoming general with the fish, was not of a kind
to remove from his mind the impression made by the sight of the
gems. It turned on burglary.
Lord Dreever began it.
“Oh, I say,” he said, “I forgot to tell you, Aunt Julia, Number Six
was burgled the other night.”
Number 6a, Eaton Square, was the family’s London house.
“Burgled!” cried Sir Thomas.
“Well, broken into,” said his lordship, gratified to find that he
had got the ear of his entire audience. Even Lady Julia was silent
and attentive. “Chap got in through the scullery window about one
o’clock in the morning.”
“And what did you do?” inquired Sir Thomas.
“Oh, I–er–I was out at the time,” said Lord Dreever. “But
something frightened the feller,” he went on hurriedly, “and he made
a bolt for it without taking anything.”
“Burglary,” said a young man, whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to
be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of
a pause, “is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the
avaricious.” He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and
made a rapid note on his cuff.
Everybody seemed to have something to say on. the subject. One young
lady gave it as her opinion that she would not like to find a
burglar under her bed. Somebody else had heard of a fellow whose
father had fired at the butler, under the impression that he was a
house-breaker, and had broken a valuable bust of Socrates. Lord
Dreever had known a man at college whose brother wrote lyrics for
musical comedy, and had done one about a burglar’s best friend being
his mother.
“Life,” said Charteris, who had had time for reflection, “is a house
which we all burgle. We enter it uninvited, take all that we can lay
hands on, and go out again.” He scribbled, “Life–house–burgle,” on
his cuff, and replaced the pencil.
“This man’s brother I was telling you about,” said Lord Dreever,
“says there’s only one rhyme in the English language to ‘burglar,’
and that’s ‘gurgler–‘ unless you count ‘pergola’! He says–”
“Personally,” said Jimmy, with a glance at McEachern, “I have rather
a sympathy for burglars. After all, they are one of the hardest-
working classes in existence. They toil while everybody else is
asleep. Besides, a burglar is only a practical socialist. People
talk a lot about the redistribution of wealth. The burglar goes out
and does it. I have found burglars some of the decentest criminals I
have ever met.”
“I despise burglars!” ejaculated Lady Julia, with a suddenness that
stopped Jimmy’s eloquence as if a tap had been turned off. “If I
found one coming after my jewels, and I had a pistol, I’d shoot