to his lips shook slightly, but his eyes held Sir James’s defiantly. For a
moment the hostility between the two seemed likely to burst into flame, but in
the end Julius lowered his eyes, defeated.
“For the moment, I reckon you’re the boss.”
“Thank you,” said the other. “We will say ten o’clock then?” With
consummate ease of manner he turned to Tommy. “I must confess, Mr. Beresford,
that it was something of a surprise to me to see you here this evening. The
last I heard of you was that your friends were in grave anxiety on your behalf.
Nothing had been heard of you for some days, and Miss Tuppence was inclined to
think you had got into difficulties.”
“I had, sir!” Tommy grinned reminiscently. “I was never in a tighter
place in my life.”
Helped out by questions from Sir James, he gave an abbreviated account of
his adventures. The lawyer looked at him with renewed interest as he brought
the tale to a close.
“You got yourself out of a tight place very well,” he said gravely. “I
congratulate you. You displayed a great deal of ingenuity and carried your part
through well.”
Tommy blushed, his face assuming a prawnlike hue at the praise.
“I couldn’t have got away but for the girl, sir.”
“No.” Sir James smiled a little. “It was lucky for you she happened
to–er–take a fancy to you.” Tommy appeared about to protest, but Sir James
went on. “There’s no doubt about her being one of the gang, I suppose?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. I thought perhaps they were keeping her there by
force, but the way she acted didn’t fit in with that. You see, she went back to
them when she could have got away.”
Sir James nodded thoughtfully.
“What did she say? Something about wanting to be taken to Marguerite?”
“Yes, sir. I suppose she meant Mrs. Vandemeyer.”
“She always signed herself Rita Vandemeyer. All her friends spoke of her
as Rita. Still, I suppose the girl must have been in the habit of calling her
by her full name. And, at the moment she was crying out to her, Mrs. Vandemeyer
was either dead or dying! Curious! There are one or two points that strike me
as being obscure–their sudden change of attitude towards yourself, for
instance. By the way, the house was raided, of course?”
“Yes, sir, but they’d all cleared out.”
“Naturally,” said Sir James dryly.
“And not a clue left behind.”
“I wonder—-” The lawyer tapped the table thoughtfully.
Something in his voice made Tommy look up. Would this man’s eyes have seen
something where theirs had been blind? He spoke impulsively:
“I wish you’d been there, sir, to go over the house!”
“I wish I had,” said Sir James quietly. He sat for a moment in silence.
Then he looked up. “And since then? What have you been doing?”
For a moment, Tommy stared at him. Then it dawned on him that of course
the lawyer did not know.
“I forgot that you didn’t know about Tuppence,” he said slowly. The
sickening anxiety, forgotten for a while in the excitement of knowing Jane Finn
was found at last, swept over him again.
The lawyer laid down his knife and fork sharply.
“Has anything happened to Miss Tuppence?” His voice was keen-edged.
“She’s disappeared,” said Julius.
“When?”
“A week ago.”
“How?”
Sir James’s questions fairly shot out. Between them Tommy and Julius gave
the history of the last week and their futile search.
Sir James went at once to the root of the matter.
“A wire signed with your name? They knew enough of you both for that. They
weren’t sure of how much you had learnt in that house. Their kidnapping of Miss
Tuppence is the counter-move to your escape. If necessary they could seal your
lips with a threat of what might happen to her.”
Tommy nodded.
“That’s just what I thought, sir.”
Sir James looked at him keenly. “You had worked that out, had you? Not
bad–not at all bad. The curious thing is that they certainly did not know
anything about you when they first held you prisoner. You are sure that you did