"I hope you have not been inconvenienced about the telephone."
"We could get no reply from the exchange," said Sir Lyster, "and the wire to the Admiralty is out of order."
"I had to disconnect you after I left this morning," said Malcolm
Sage quietly. "My chauffeur swarmed up one of the standards.
Incidentally he wrecked an almost new pair of breeches."
"They'll have to go in the Naval Estimates," cried Mr. Llewellyn John, who was feeling almost jovial now the tension of the past twenty-four hours had been removed.
"From the first," proceeded Malcolm Sage, "it was obvious that this theft was planned either at the Admiralty or at the War Office."
"That is absurd!" cried Sir Lyster with heat, whilst Lord Beamdale leaned forward, his usually apathetic expression of indifference giving place to one of keen interest.
"I accepted the assurance that only three people in this house knew of the existence of the document," Malcolm Sage proceeded, as if there had been no interruption. "There was no object in any of those three persons stealing that to which they had ready access."
Lord Beamdale nodded his agreement with the reasoning.
"Therefore," continued Malcolm Sage, "the theft must have been planned by someone who knew about the document before it came here, and furthermore knew that it was to be here at a certain time. To confirm this hypothesis we have the remarkable circumstances that the blank paper substituted for the original document was, in quality and the number of sheets, identical with that of the document itself."
"Good," ejaculated Lord Beamdale, himself a keen mathematician.