“Oh, just sprinkled it about in convenient dollops, like the gentle dew from Heaven, you know.”
“Well, goodness knows what’s going to come of all this,” Cynthia sighed.
“I say,” remarked George, with the appearance of careful thought, “wouldn’t it be a good idea to put your brother and sister off now? Er—supposed to be coming on Tuesday, aren’t they? Yes,” said George weightily, “if I were you I should put them off.”
“We’re certainly going to get into the most dreadful mess,” said Cynthia, not, however, relieving George’s mind.
“Your library carpet’s got into that already,” said Mr. Doyle consolingly.
“Enough of this chatty badinage!” Dora broke in. “Do you know that Mr. Reginald Foster has gone galloping off for the police? He won’t find him, because he won’t think of looking in your library cupboard, but he’ll ring up the nearest station; and then things are going to get busy. We’ve got to work out a plan of campaign. Remember I’ve had it put on record that our host and hostess were lured away from the house.”
“Well, there’s nothing to contradict that,” Guy agreed. “It’s lucky we gave the maids the week-end off, just in case of emergencies. Emergencies seem to be arising every minute. I’ve thought out a plan. I’ll get George and you, Doyle, to help me push the car out of the garage and a little way down the road, and then I’ll come driving back, making as much noise as I can, and generally enact the householder arriving home after a long ride. I surmise that those strange sounds, which seem to have died away altogether, will then break out with renewed force from the library, and I shall liberate our prisoner. I will then deal with any other emergencies as they crop up. It doesn’t matter about our stories coinciding, because your household won’t have heard or know anything at all. So, after you’ve helped me with the car, you three sneak home and go straight to bed.”
“All except me,” murmured Mr. Doyle, “who will be summoned to the telephone a few minutes after the prisoner has been liberated. ‘Knowing that such a distinguished journalist was in the vicinity, Mr. Nesbitt, etc.’”
Guy grinned at him guiltily. “You’re not going to make a newspaper story of it too, Doyle, surely?”
“You bet I am,” rejoined Mr. Doyle grimly. “And a houseful of furniture too. My motives, let it be understood, are entirely mercenary.”