It was not until the following morning, when the whir of a hastily driven motor was heard stopping outside, followed by the hurried appearance of Mr. Narkom himself, that Cleek recalled the incident of the preceding night.
"Haven't come to tell me the Capitoline Venus has disappeared, have you?" he said, jokingly, as the puffing Superintendent strove to get his breath. "Dollops had a nightmare——"
He got no further, for the purple face of Mr. Narkom had turned almost white with the shock of what seemed to him quite supernatural knowledge, and he nodded feebly.
Then it was Cleek's own turn to show amazement, and for a minute he stood transfixed.
"Nonsense, man!" he rapped out. "She was there last night. Here, Dollops——" He flung open the door, but the lad, scenting trouble from the early arrival of the Superintendent, was already tumbling into the room.
"She is all right, ain't she, sir?" he squealed, turning from one man to the other. "The Wenus, I mean. A fair beauty she was."
"That's just it, Dollops; though what you have got to do with it, I don't know," said Narkom, slowly. "But your 'Wenus' has gone, vanished in the night out of that gallery, steel-lined and steel-gated as it is, and with barred windows, Petrie and Hammond outside all night, too, as a special favour to the Italian Government. And there you have it." He looked at Cleek, who stood staring through narrowed eyelids, his face pale and set, his mouth in a straight line. "But what do you know about it, youngster?"
Dollops told his tale of the preceding night with renewed gusto, but the Superintendent only shook his head.
"Only makes matters worse," he said, "for it proves that the thing was safe at closing time. How it's been done beats me! All your invisible deaths and vanishing stones are nothing to it. I've had a good many mysterious cases to deal with, but this beats all. If it wasn't for the blessed lump of marble being so valuable——"