“Gurther?” frowned Leon.
He turned the figure on its back and gave a little gasp of surprise, for there looked up to the starry skies the heavy face of Pfeiffer.
“Pfeiffer! I could have sworn it was the other! There has been some double-crossing here. Let me think.” He stood for fully a minute, his chin on his hand. “I could have understood Gurther; he was becoming a nuisance and a danger to the old man. Pfeiffer, the more reliable of the two, hated him. My first theory was that Gurther had been put out by order of Oberzohn.”
“Suppose Gurther heard that order, or came to know of it?” asked Manfred quietly.
Leon snapped his fingers.
“That is it! We had a similar case a few years ago, you will remember, George? The old man gave the ‘out’ order to Pfeiffer—and Gurther got his blow in first. Shrewd fellow!”
When they returned to the house, the three were seated in a row in Johnson Lee’s library. Cuccini, of course, was an old acquaintance. Of the other two men, Leon recognized one, a notorious gunman whose photograph had embellished the pages of Hue and Cry for months.
The third, and evidently the skilled workman of the party, for he it was whom they had addressed as “Mike” and who had burnt out the lock of Lee’s safe, was identified by Meadows as Mike Selwyn, a skilful burglar and bank-smasher, who had, according to his statement, only arrived from the Continent that afternoon in answer to a flattering invitation which promised considerable profit to himself.
“And why I left Milan,” he said bitterly, “where the graft is easy and the money’s good, I’d like you to tell me!”
The prisoners were removed to the nearest secure lock-up, and by the time Lee’s servants returned from their dance, all evidence of an exciting hour had disappeared, except that the blackened and twisted door of the safe testified to the sinister character of the visitation.