“Why didn’t he come to me himself?” Peter Ruff asked. “I like to have these particulars at first hand.”
“He is in attendance upon Sir James at the ball,” Lady Mary answered. “There is trouble in the East, as you know, and Sir James is expecting dispatches to-night. Maurice is not allowed to leave.”
“Has he told Sir James yet?”
“He had not when I left,” Lady Mary answered. “If he is forced to do so, it will be ruin! Mr. Ruff, you must help us Maurice is such a dear, but a mistake like this, at the very beginning of his career, would be fatal. Here we are. That is my brother waiting just inside the hall.”
A young man came up to them in the vestibule. He was somewhat pale, but otherwise perfectly self-possessed. From the shine of his glossy black hair to the tips of his patent boots he was, in appearance, everything that a young Englishman of birth and athletic tastes could hope to be. Peter Ruff liked the look of him. He waited for no introduction, but laid his hand at once upon the young man’s shoulder.
“Between seven-thirty and arriving here,” he said, drawing him on one side—“quick! Tell me, whom did you see? What opportunities were there of stealing the paper, and by whom?”
“I finished it at five and twenty past seven,” the young man said, “sealed it in an official envelope, and stood it up on my desk by the side of my coat and hat and muffler, which my servant had laid there, ready for me to put on. My bedroom opens out from my sitting room. While I was dressing, two men called for me—Paul Jermyn and Count von Hern. They walked through to my bedroom first, and then sat together in the sitting room until I came out. The door was wide open, and we talked all the time.”
“They called accidentally?” Peter Ruff asked.
“No—by appointment,” the young man replied. “We were all coming on here to the dance, and we had agreed to dine together first at the Savoy.”
“You say that you left the paper on your desk with your coat and hat?” Peter Ruff asked. “Was it there when you came out?”