“No.”
Before they parted, Clifford and the detective had arranged between them the details of a little plot which Clifford thought would certainly suffice to excite the appetite of the astute but daring thief who was at the bottom of all the mischief.
In the week following Clifford’s departure, therefore, there arrived at the Blue Lion a rough-looking person who gave himself out as a successful emigrant, who had returned to his native land with his pockets full of money. The man stayed at the inn for several days, boasted openly in the bar of his luck, showed the results of it in lavish “treating” and in the apparently careless exhibition of handfuls of gold.
But it was all in vain. Hemming had to report to Clifford, not without secret triumph, that the “wealthy emigrant” had been allowed, after a prolonged stay, to leave the inn without having received a visit from the midnight thief. Clifford was much chagrined, although he affected to think that it was only in common prudence that the thief, on whom at least the suspicion of murder now hung, had grown more careful.
But when Hemming had left him, Clifford began to think out a new problem which this last occurrence had presented to him. Was Jem Stickels the thief?
But then it was certainly not Jem Stickels whose hand he had caught under his pillow. And a shiver passed through the young fellow’s frame as he remembered the touch of the smooth skin, of the little slender fingers.
It was not until the first days of March, on a blustering, stormy morning, that Nell Claris, her resolution broken down by a pathetic appeal from her uncle, came back to Stroan.
George Claris met his niece at the station, and each was shocked at the changed appearance of the other. Nell seemed to have lost half her beauty; her cheeks had lost their roundness, and her eyes the look of child-like happiness which had been one of her greatest charms.
“Oh, uncle!” she cried softly, when she had received his silent kiss on her forehead, “you don’t look the same uncle! What have you been doing to yourself?”
“Oh, we’ve been pottering along much in the same old way,” answered the innkeeper, affecting an indifference which he was far from feeling. “Nothing’s happened in particular, since Mr. King went back to London. He wanted your address, as I told you in my letters. Why wouldn’t you let me give it to him?”