Haslemere laughed. "You talk as if you were a detective in a boy's story paper! Not likely I should be such a fool as to hand the boodle over to men I didn't know by sight! They have been here before, in a bunch, Drivenny judging the jewels, the detectives——"
"My lord, the three gentlemen from London have arrived in a motor-car," announced a footman. "They wished to send their cards to your lordship." He presented a silver tray with three crude but business-like cards lying on it.
"Show them in at once," said Haslemere. He stood in front of a bookcase containing the works of George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. I knew that bookcase well, and the secret which it so respectably hid. Behind, was the safe in which our family had for several generations placed such valuables as happened to be in the house. Haslemere slid back with a touch a little bronze ornament decorating a hinge on the glass door. In a tiny recess underneath was the head of a spring, which he pressed. The whole bookcase slipped along the wall and revealed the safe. Haslemere opened this, and took out a despatch box. While Violet received the box from his hands and laid it on a table near by, my brother closed the safe, and replaced the bookcase. A moment later, the three important visitors were ushered into the room, their names pronounced with respect by the servant: "Mr. Drivenny: Mr. Blackburn: Mr. Combes."
Haslemere met his guests with civility and honoured them consciously by presenting the trio to Violet. "This is my brother, back from a military mission to America," he indicated me casually, without troubling to mention my name.
The three men looked at me, and I at them. It struck me that they would not have been sorry to dispense with my presence. There was just a flash of something like chagrin which passed across the faces: the thin, aquiline face of Drivenny, spectacled, beetle-browed, clean-shaven: the square, puffy-cheeked face of Combes: the red, round face of the American, Blackburn. The flash vanished as quickly as it came, leaving the three middle-aged countenances impassive; but it made me wonder. Why should the jewel-expert and the two detectives object to the presence of another beside Lord and Lady Haslemere, when that other was a near relative of the family? Surely it was a trifling detail that I should witness the ceremony of their taking over the contents of the tin box?
Whatever their true feelings might have been, by tacit consent I was made to realise that I counted for no more in the scene than a fly on the wall, to Haslemere and Violet. No notice was taken of me while Haslemere unlocked the despatch box, and Violet—as the organiser of the scheme—took out the closely piled jewel-boxes it contained. This done, she proceeded to arrange them on the long oak table, cleared for the purpose. I stood in the background, as one by one the neatly numbered velvet, satin or Russia-leather cases were opened, and the description of the jewels within read aloud by Haslemere from a list. Each of the three new-comers had a duplicate list, and there was considerable talk before the cases were closed, and returned to the despatch box. Most of this talk came from Violet and Haslemere, both of whom were excited. As for Drivenny, Blackburn and Combes, it seemed to me that, in their hearts, they would gladly have hastened proceedings. They were polite but intensely business-like, and as soon as they could manage it the box was stuffed into a commonplace brown kitbag which the footman had brought in with the visitors. The three had motored from London to Hasletowers; and they smiled drily when Violet asked if they "thought there was danger of an attack on the way back."
"None whatever," replied the square-faced Combes. "We've made sure of that. There's too much at stake to run risks."
"Don't you remember I told you, Violet, what Mr. Combes said before?" Haslemere reminded his wife: "that the road between here and Christie's would swarm with plain clothes men in motors and on bicycles. If every gang of jewel-thieves in England or Europe were on this job, they'd have their trouble for their pains."
"I remember," Violet admitted, "but there's been such a lot about this affair in the papers! Thieves are so clever——"
"Not so clever as our friends," Haslemere admonished her, with one of his slightly patronising smiles for the jewel-expert and the detectives. "That's why they've got the upper hand; that's why we've asked their co-operation."