"Bad news, eh, Stafford?" he said. "Sit down and have some coffee. The girl is gone?"
Stafford nodded.
"And our unfortunate detective-constable, who was sent to watch, is half-way to the mortuary, I presume?"
"Not so bad as that, sir," said Stafford, "but he's got a pretty bad crack. He's recovered consciousness but remembers nothing that happened."
Sir Stanley nodded.
"Very scientifically done," he said admiringly. "This, of course, is the work of the Boundary Gang."
"I wish——" began Stafford between his teeth.
"Save your breath, my friend," smiled Sir Stanley; "wishing will do nothing. You could arrest every known member of the gang, and they'd have twenty alibis ready, and jolly good alibis too. It is years since the colonel staged an outrage of this kind and his right hand has not lost its cunning. Look at the organisation of it! The men get into the house without attracting the attention of your watcher. Then, at the exact second that the ambulance is due, along comes their 'cosher,' knocks down the policeman on duty. I don't suppose the thing took more than ten minutes. Everything was timed. They must have known the hour the policeman on the beat passed along the street."
Sir Stanley poured out the coffee with his own hands, and relapsed back into his armchair.