"He must've been seeing things," asserted Larry. "Now, if you want to know all about it, Mr. Teal, I saw the doctor the other day, and he told me I was run down. 'What you want, Larry, is a nice holiday,' he says — not that I'd let anyone call me by my first name, you understand, but this doc is quite a good-class gentleman. 'What you want is a holiday,' he says. 'Why don't you take a sea voyage?' So, seeing I've got an old aunt in Sweden, I thought I'd pay her a visit. Naturally, I thought, the old lady would like to see some newspapers and read how things were going in the old country —"
"And what did she want the stones for?" inquired Teal politely. "Is she making a rock garden?"
"Oh, them?" said Larry innocently. "Them was for my uncle. He's a geo — geo —"
"Geologist is the word you want," said the detective, without smiling. "Now let's go back to London, and you can write all that down and sign it."
They went back to London with a resigned but still chatty cracksman, though the party lacked some of the high spirits which might have accompanied it. The most puzzled member of it was undoubtedly Larry the Stick, and he spent a good deal of time on the journey trying to think how it could have happened.
He knew that the bonds and jewels had been packed in his suit-case when he left London, for he had gone straight back to his lodgings after he left the Temple Lane Safe Deposit and stowed them away in the bag that was already half-filled in anticipation of an early departure. He had dozed in his chair for a few hours, and caught the 7.25 from King's Cross — the bag had never been out of his sight. Except… once during the morning he had succumbed to a not unreasonable thirst, and spent half an hour in the restaurant car in earnest collaboration with a bottle of Worthington. But there was no sign of his bag having been tampered with when he came back, and he had seen no familiar face on the train.
It was one of the most mystifying things that had ever happened to him, and the fact that the police case against him had been considerably weakened by his bereavement was a somewhat dubious compensation.
Chief Inspector Teal reached London with a theory of his own. He expounded it to the Assistant Commissioner without enthusiasm.
"I'm afraid there's no doubt that Larry's telling the truth," he said. "He's no idea what happened to the swag, but I have. Nobody double-crossed him, because he always works alone, and he hasn't any enemies that I know of. There's just one man who might have done it — you know who I mean."
The Assistant Commissioner sniffed. He had an irritating and eloquent sniff.