He was interrupted by a strangled shriek from within the library. "Charles, look! look!" Celia cried.
"Seventy-three, counting this one," Peter said. "It's all right, Celia, it's us!"
Chapter Eighteen
He stepped through the opening into the library, as he spoke, and found himself confronting Charles' levelled revolver. Celia and Mrs. Bosanquet were gazing with startled fixity at him, and Inspector Tomlinson had just lowered a Colt automatic.
Charles put down his revolver, and swallowed twice before he spoke. Then he said: "Oh, hullo! Just back?" His flippancy deserted him. "Gosh, you have given us a fright! Where's Margaret? What happened?"
Margaret came through the aperture, and at sight of her Celia jumped up and flew to embrace her. "Oh, darling, I've been thinking you dead ever since ten o'clock!" she said, half-crying. "Who found you? Did you escape by yourselves?"
By this time both Michael and Fripp had come into the room. Charles wrung Michael's hand. "Good man! Yes, we know all about you. The inspector had to split on you."
There was a positive babel of talk. After a while Mrs. Bosanquet made herself heard above it. "But surely that is the man who cleaned all the rooms so thoroughly?" she said in a bewildered voice, and pointed at Fripp.
"Yes, ma'am," said Fripp with feeling, "and if I was you I wouldn't have one of them cleaners in the house, not if I was paid to. They're enough to break your heart."
Michael, who had been speaking to Inspector Tomlinson, now glanced at his watch. "Good Lord, it's almost five o'clock! Fripp and I had better hurry, or we shall run into one of the servants at the Inn. Look here, you people, the best thing you can do is to go to bed, and get what sleep you can. I'll come back after breakfast, tell you some of the things you're all dying to know, and set about the job of finding that other entrance. Now that you've discovered this panel it ought to be easy. There's only one other thing: Fortescue and his sister have got to keep themselves hidden. No one must know that they've been found. See? No one. In fact you must give the impression to anyone you happen to see that you're worried to death, and are sure that they must have gone out, and got kidnapped in the grounds, or something of that sort." He looked at Mrs. Bowers rather dubiously, but she nodded. "Sure you understand? And don't let that housemaid of yours find them here."