"The other," Jack's companion whispered, with a hoarse chuckle of triumph, "is quite safe in my breast pocket."
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
THE SILVER LAMP.
The wonderful coolness and audacity of his companion filled Jack with admiration. He had forgotten for the moment that there was any danger at all. It seemed to him to be a good thing to have so adroit and cunning a colleague to work with. The whole thing had been so wonderfully swift; hardly a moment seemed to have elapsed between the extinguishing of the light and the return of Seymour with the duplicate of the plan safely in his pocket.
What he proposed to do next Jack could not guess for the moment, neither did he much care. At the same time, he felt quite convinced of the fact that Seymour had some deep scheme in his mind. Jack's spirits rose in quite an unaccountable way. He warmly congratulated himself on the fact that he had found Seymour and brought him into the campaign against Anstruther. The danger was by no means over yet, as Seymour must have recognized; but that did not seem to trouble him much, for he was shaking now with suppressed mirth, and was evidently enjoying the situation as one does a screaming farce from a comfortable place in the stalls.
Jack was about to whisper something of this to his companion, when the latter checked him with a touch on the arm. Inside the room, in the comparatively moderated light of the lamps, Jack could see Carrington fussing about uneasily. "I tell you that there were two plans," he muttered. "I am absolutely certain there was a duplicate. If you have played any kind of trick upon me I hope you will confess it at once."
"Trick be hanged, suppose that I indulge in practical joking? I say you have made a mistake; the duplicate plan is somewhere else."
"And I am equally certain that it was with those papers," Carrington blustered. "They were lying side by side a minute ago. And now one of them is gone, and you want me to believe that it has been spirited away by unseen hands."
"I don't want you to believe anything of the sort," Anstruther replied. "Not a minute had elapsed between the time that the light went out and the moment I lighted the match. What a nervous, frightened fool you are. You will be saying next that Seymour is concealed somewhere in the room, and snatched this brilliant opportunity for purloining these papers. Really, we are getting on. Hadn't you better look round the house. You will have to go to bed presently, and I should advise you to lock your door."
All this brutal sarcasm was utterly lost upon Carrington. He was as frightened and nervous as a lonely woman in a lonely house, who has discovered some strange man there. He darted from the room, followed by Anstruther's contemptuous laughter, and returned presently, saying that he had made a thorough search of the flat.