Two nights later a loud ringing and banging on the door of the villa disturbed the occupants just after they had separated for the night. It was quite late, for they had all been to a theatre and supper party. A postman stood at the door. Could he see Madame Erskine about a cable which had come, marked “Urgent,” and which he was not sure was meant for her, as beyond the name there was no address.
Mrs. Erskine, whose bedroom lights had only been twinkling a short time, put her head over the window-sill and said that she would come down at once. The man was told to enter, and the front door closed.
A figure crouching behind some bushes sprang lightly erect, waited a moment or two, listening intently at a shuttered window—the window into the lower hall—then, lifting a ladder lying buried in the earth, stood it deftly against Mrs. Erskine's window ledge, and was up with the swiftness of a cat. He took off his rubber shoes and left them on the sill. Then he swung himself into the room and looked at the safe. The door stood wide open, the key was in it. In a second the black figure slipped to the bedroom door. Mrs. Erskine had left it locked. He strode back to the safe, took out its key and weighed it carefully, though swiftly, on a little balance. Followed several quick measurements taken with a sort of dialled spanner, after which four impressions had to be made in boxes containing the special Foch compound. Balance, spanner, and boxes were returned to a little black bag the man wore strapped to his waist. This done with the utmost but unflurried haste, the key was replaced in the safe, and the figure vanished the way it had come. The ladder was laid on the grass for a moment, till the ground under the window had been smoothed with a rake-head, also produced from the bag. In another minute ladder and man seemed to melt, rather than to pass, through the gate.
The telegram was not for Mrs. Erskine after all, as a glance at its obviously business contents told her. It took some time to make this clear to the postman, who was an “extra,” and spoke with an atrocious Basque accent—acquired during the retreat from Mons, when Watts' company had got inextricably entangled with some of the blue Bérets. Finally the postman grasped the truth, apologised, and “returned to the post office to make further inquiries.” These seemed to lead him to a small hotel in a back street, after a change of toilet in the nearest dark doorway, which included turning his coat inside out, ripping off some narrow red braid from each trouser leg, and substituting one cap for another. That done, Watts went to bed, to speculate with some curiosity on exactly what had taken place in the villa during the colloquy in the central hall. He knew better than to ask his superior, and finally consoled himself with the thought that he would doubtless hear of it some day under “From information which has just come to hand.”
Chapter X
Eight o'clock next morning found the Chief Inspector wrapped in slumber. The Boots interrupted them to tell him that there was an insistent telephone call for Mr. Deane—a lady speaking from Cannes. Grateful for the fact that science did not yet enable Miss West to see him as well as hear him, Mr. Deane descended the stairs sleepily after the briefest of toilets.
“Gladys speaking. I was at Monte Carlo last night with some Americans, and in the Rooms I saw a lady I had last seen in London at the hotel which we so often talk about. She had room number twelve there. You remember her, too, don't you?”
“Perfectly. What was she doing when you caught sight of her?”
A little gurgle came through. “Talking to Jack.”
“Indeed!” Pointer's voice sounded as amused as hers, but his eyes were hard and keen. “Oh, indeed! Had she got rid of her cold?”