“What does he mean?” he demanded pungently.
But for once Mr Carlyle’s self-possession had forsaken him. He recognized that somehow Carrados had been guilty of an appalling lapse, by which his reputation for prescience was wrecked in that quarter for ever, and at the catastrophe his very ears began to exude embarrassment.
In the awkward silence Carrados himself seemed to recognize that something was amiss.
“We appear to be at cross-purposes,” he observed. “I inferred that the disappearance of the necklace would be the essence of our investigation.”
“Have I said a word about it disappearing?” demanded the Manager, with a contempt-laden raucity that he made no pretence of softening. “You don’t seem to have grasped the simple facts about the case, Mr Carrados. Really, I hardly think——Oh, come in!”
There had been a knock at the door, then another. A clerk now entered with an open telegram.
“Mr Longworth wished you to see this at once, sir.”
“We may as well go,” whispered Mr Carlyle with polite depression to his colleague.
“Here, wait a minute,” said the Manager, who had been biting his thumb-nail over the telegram. “No, not you”—to the lingering clerk—“you clear.” Much of the embarrassment that had troubled Mr Carlyle a minute before seemed to have got into the Manager’s system. “I don’t understand this,” he confessed awkwardly. “It’s from Bellitzer. He wires: ‘Have just heard alleged robbery Straithwaite pearls. Advise strictest investigation.’”
Mr Carlyle suddenly found it necessary to turn to the wall and consult a highly coloured lithographic inducement to insure. Mr Carrados alone remained to meet the Manager’s constrained glance.