“Meanwhile, of course,” he went on, “Freddie had muddled things up no end by his pranks. But Mrs. Brent had cleared Miss Cressage the night I came home again, so that matter didn’t affect us. My uncle had been carrying on his part of the show in my absence—producing an atmosphere, if you see what I mean. All that stuff about the Talisman always coming back—of course, it always does come back!—and so forth. That was all meant for Mrs. Caistor Scorton’s benefit. We wanted to get her into a state of uncertainty—general jumps, in fact, semi-eerie atmosphere, you know, no saying what’s going to happen, and so forth. My uncle managed that side of it, with special attention to her as soon as I’d picked her out.”
It was evident that old Rollo was half-ashamed of the part he had played. He said nothing, however, and Eric went on.
“Once we were sure of our effect, we brought the Talisman home again.”
He nodded in the direction of the cabinet.
“We took care that Freddie knew about it first thing. He passed it on to Mrs. Caistor Scorton. She’s not a brainy person, really; and she fell right into the trap we had laid for her. Given her brand of mind, we counted that she would go straight off to where she had hidden the replica she had stolen; and we had only to keep an eye on her. It worked out quite according to plan. She lost her head when she saw the thing over there. She must have thought the world was upside-down or something. So off she scuttled at once to see what had become of her own Talisman. Mixed up with the general muddle in her mind there was probably the fear that we had found the thing and got it back. So away she went, to make sure. That really seems to support the kleptomania notion. No thief with any constructive capacity would have dreamed of going to his cache in these circumstances. As soon as she left the house I was on the watch with a telescope from my rooms in the tower up above here. You can see every part of the place from there—bar the belt of trees round the pool. You can see the Pool itself, and I watched her go down there and examine her hiding-place. As soon as she put the things back again I went off as quick as I could limp to secure them.”
“I remember we met you on the road.”
“Yes. I passed you and went right on to the willow. You can guess how I felt when I put my hand into the hole and found nothing there. I hadn’t seen you and Miss Cressage through the telescope, you know; you must have been hidden in the belt of trees when I was on the watch; and you only came out after I had come down from my post.”
“So that’s why you were looking puzzled when you came in here?”
“Well, how would you have felt? It seemed a bit weird to find the things gone, within a minute or two of my seeing them put back into the hole.”
Westenhanger smiled.