"Then for why do you take it?"
"That is my affair. I will bring the fifty pounds to-morrow night, but I must have the cross whether you help me to get it or not. Where does he keep it?"
"Keep it? Attendez. Oh, I know. In the strong box locked in his bedroom. He is a man to shoot certain, and he always has his pistol to hand. You will give me the money instantly you are in the 'ouse, for if you go upstairs you will be a dead man at once. I tell you so myself."
"That is an extremely unpleasant prospect. I must see my lawyer—my notaire, mademoiselle—in the morning, and arrange my affairs. Which window will you unlatch for me?"
"The one at the front, the nearest to where you stood when I saw you. If you will come at one o'clock I will be in the room with the beautiful pearls. Now I must fly. Bon soir, cher Mr. Jones."
On the following morning Maxwell-Pitt paid his hotel bill and went up to town. In the evening he returned with his bicycle, getting out at the station beyond Bamburn. At a few minutes to one o'clock he entered the grounds of Burgoyne Lodge, and made his way stealthily to the window fixed on. It open noiselessly, and he clambered through. Mademoiselle Adèle was not there. Perhaps she was reading Sir Walter Scott to Miss Richards. He would wait for half an hour, at any rate, before making any move. Perhaps Adèle had thought better of her determination about the cross, and would bring it with her rather than risk trouble.
He sat down and mused. A queer life, that of a burglar. Reminiscences of detective tales came back to him. He thought of Sherlock Holmes. The doings of the Burglars' Club would have puzzled him at first. Then there was his great predecessor, Poe's Dupin, the detective of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, of The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter. Ah, The Purloined Letter! They were searching for that all over, probing every inch of space in the house for it, and there it was all the time, underneath their noses, hanging in a card-rack beneath the mantelpiece. Maxwell-Pitt rose and flashed his light over the mantelpiece. There was the usual assortment of odds and ends, but the V.C. was not there. No; it was too much to expect. Where did Richards keep it? Adèle had hesitated before replying that it was in the strong box in his bedroom. It might be—or it might not. Here, at any rate, were obvious traces of its owner—his letters and pipe on a side table, his service magazines on the chair. If the V.C. wasn't on the mantelpiece, it might be elsewhere in the room.
There was a bookcase with a cupboard and drawers. He opened the bookcase, but closed it quickly at the sight of the serried ranks of the "Encyclopædia Britannica." He had no better luck in the cupboard, but in the first drawer he pulled out, his eye was at once caught by two small cases. He eagerly opened one, to find the South African Medal, but in the second—ye gods! It was the Victoria Cross!
Maxwell-Pitt's fingers closed over it. At this moment the door opened gently.
"Who is there?" whispered a voice.