Martin Watt raised his hand.
‘One moment,’ he said, ‘let us do a spot of neat detective work. What the German gentleman with no manners has lost must be very small. “And why, my dear Sherlock?” you ask. Because, my little Watsons, when our obliging young comrade, Campion, offered them an egg wrapped up in a table napkin they thought they’d holed in one. It isn’t the Black Dudley diamonds, I suppose, Petrie?’
‘There aren’t any,’ said Wyatt shortly. ‘Damn it all!’ he burst out with a sudden violence. ‘I never felt so helpless in my life.’
‘If only we had a few guns,’ mourned Chris Kennedy, whose wound even had not slaked his thirst for a scrap. ‘Then we might make an attempt to rush ’em. But unarmed against birds who shoot like that we shouldn’t have an earthly.’
‘It’s not such a bad thing for you that we’re not armed, my lad,’ said Abbershaw, straightening his shoulders and stepping back from the table. ‘You don’t want too much excitement with an arm like that. You’ve lost enough blood already. If I were you, I’d try and get a spot of sleep. What’s your opinion, Prenderby?’
‘Oh, sleep, by all means,’ said Michael, grinning, ‘if he can get it, which doesn’t seem likely.’
They were all standing round the patient on the hearth-rug, with their backs to the fire-place, and for the moment Kennedy was the centre of interest.
Hardly were the words out of Prenderby’s mouth when they were suddenly and startlingly confirmed by an hysterical scream from Anne Edgeware.
‘He’s gone!’ she said wildly, as they turned to her. Her dark eyes were dilated with fear, and every trace of her usual sophisticated and slightly blasé manner had disappeared.
‘He was standing here – just beside me. He spoke to me a second ago. He couldn’t have got past me to the door – I was directly in his way. He’s just vanished. Oh, God – I’m going potty! I think – I . . .’ She screamed again.