“What do you make of it?” Freddie was taking up his rôle of general inquisitor once more. “It seems a bit rum, doesn’t it? And old Dangerfield’s had the laugh, after all. He swore it would turn up again—and here it is! Queer, eh?”
“Very strange,” Westenhanger agreed coldly.
Freddie was outside the scope of suspicion now, but Westenhanger had other reasons for disliking him. And what infernal impudence of the little brute to start this kind of thing again after the fiasco of his last effort in the business. Freddie, however, was not to be discouraged by coldness. His bright little eyes flickered from face to face, and he continued his remarks quite unperturbed by the obviously hostile atmosphere.
“What’s that old tag about the man who finds a thing being the one who knows where to look for it?” he went on. “I begin to think it’s a practical joke after all. The old man’s been pulling our legs! He laid off all that stuff about the Talisman being able to look after itself. Then he took it away himself that night, eh? And now he brings it back again, and he laughs in his sleeve at us. How’s that, umpire?”
He glanced round the table for applause, but received none.
“If you ask me, Freddie,” Douglas pronounced bluntly, “it proves two things up to the hilt. One is that you have the nerve to sit down at breakfast and criticise your host behind his back. The other is that you don’t know Mr. Dangerfield. He’s the last man who’d play a silly game of that sort. Anyone with two ounces of grey matter in his skull would see that.”
Douglas’s rebuke would have silenced most people, but Freddie’s skin was proof against even this attack.
“Think so?” he asked blandly. “Well, what better theory have you got yourself?”
Douglas took no notice of the query.
“Well, I’m very glad Mr. Dangerfield has got it back,” Nina said, ignoring Freddie’s remark. “It’s been so uncomfortable all the time to feel that he’d lost a thing like that—a thing he cared for so much.”