“Sir Clinton, you must get that back for me. I don't care what else they've taken.”
The chief constable refrained from making any promise. He glanced at Paul Fordingbridge, and was puzzled by what he read on his features. Commiseration for his sister seemed to be mingled with some other emotion which baffled Sir Clinton. Acute vexation, repressed only with difficulty, seemed to have its part; but there was something also which suggested more than a little trepidation.
“It's a rather important set of documents,” Paul Fordingbridge said, after a pause. “If you can lay your hands on them, Sir Clinton, my sister will be very much indebted to you. They would certainly never have been left here if it had not been for her notions. I wish you'd taken my advice, Jay,” he added irritably, turning to his sister. “You know perfectly well that I wanted to keep them in my own possession; but you made such a fuss about it that I let you have your way. And now the damned things are missing!”
Miss Fordingbridge made no reply. Sir Clinton interposed tactfully to relieve the obvious strain of the situation.
“We shall do our best, Miss Fordingbridge. I never care to promise more than that, you understand. Now, can you see anything else that's gone a-missing from here?”
Miss Fordingbridge pulled herself together with an effort. Clearly the loss of the diary had been a severe blow to her sentiment about her nephew's study. She glanced round the room, her eyes halting here and there at times when she seemed in doubt. At last she completed her survey.
“I don't miss anything else,” she said. “And I don't think there's anything gone that I wouldn't miss if it had been taken away.”
Sir Clinton nodded reflectively, and led the way in an examination of the rest of the house. Nothing else of any note was discovered. All the window-fastenings seemed to be intact; and there was no sign of any means whereby thieves could have entered the premises. An inspection of the contents of the sack in the drawing-room yielded no striking results. It was filled with a collection of silver knick-knacks evidently picked up merely because they were silver. Neither Paul Fordingbridge nor his sister could recall anything of real intrinsic value which might have been stolen.
“Twenty pounds' worth at the most. And they didn't even get away with it,” Sir Clinton said absent-mindedly, as he watched the inspector, in his rubber gloves, replacing the articles in the sack in preparation for transporting them to the car.
“Is that all we can do for you?” Paul Fordingbridge asked, with a certain restraint in his manner, when the Inspector had finished his task.