"You liar! The picture is in the corridor at the present time."
"Liar yourself! I've got the picture on my mantelshelf in my sitting-room rolled up as you told me to roll it up and tied with a piece of cotton. It was your own idea as the thing was to be left about casual-like as being less calculated to excite suspicion. And there it is at the present moment, and I'll take my oath to it."
Henson fairly gasped. He had been inside that said sitting-room not two hours before, and he had not failed to notice a roll of paper on the mantelshelf. And obviously Merritt was telling the truth. And equally obviously the Rembrandt was hanging in the corridor at the present moment. Henson had solved and evolved many ingenious puzzles in his time, but this one was utterly beyond him.
"Some trick of Dr. Bell's, perhaps," Merritt suggested.
"Bell suspects nothing. He is absolutely friendly to me. He could not disguise his feelings like that. Upon my word I was never so utterly at sea before in all my life. And as for Littimer, why, he has just made a fresh will more in my favour than the old one. But I'll find out. I'll get to the bottom of this business if it costs me a fortune."
He frowned moodily at his boots; he turned the thing over in his mind until his brain was dazed and muddled. The Rembrandt had been stolen, and yet there was the Rembrandt in its place. Was anything more amazing and puzzling? And nobody else seemed in the least troubled about it. Henson was more than puzzled; deep down in his heart he was frightened.
"I must keep my eyes open," he said. "I must watch night and day. Do you suppose Miss Lee noticed anything when she called to-day?"
"Not a bit of it," said Merritt, confidently "She came to see me; she had no eyes for anybody but your humble servant. Where did she get my address from? Why, didn't you introduce me to the lady yourself, and didn't I tell her I was staying at Moreton Wells for a time? I'm goin' to live in clover for a bit, my pippin. Cigars and champagne, wine and all the rest of it."
"I wish you were at the bottom of the sea before you came here," Henson growled. "You mind and be careful what you're doing with the champagne. They don't drink by the tumbler in the society you are in now, remember. Just one or two glasses and no more. If you take too much and let your tongue run you will find your stay here pretty short."
Apparently the hint was not lost on Merritt, for dinner found him in a chastened mood. His natural audacity was depressed by the splendour and luxury around him; the moral atmosphere held him down. There were so many knives and forks and glasses on the table, such a deal of food that was absolutely strange to him. The butler behind made him shiver. Hitherto in Merritt's investigations into great houses he had fought particularly shy of butlers and coachmen and upper servants of that kind. The butler's sniff and his cold suggestion as to hock slightly raised Merritt's combative spirit. And the champagne was poor, thin stuff after all. A jorum of gin and water, or a mug of beer, was what Merritt's soul longed for.