Now, had I been clever, I should have put two and two together and have foreseen that what Ean really feared was another attempt upon the wonderful collection of rare jewels he has made—a collection the existence of which is known to very few people, but is accounted among the most beautiful and rare in the country. Ean keeps his jewels—at least he kept them until recently—in a concealed safe in his own dressing-room, and very seldom was even I permitted to peep into that holy of holies. Here again some eccentricity of a lovable character is to be traced. My brother would as soon have thought of wearing a diamond in his shirt front as of painting his face like an Indian; but these hidden jewels he loved with a rare ardour, and I do truly believe that they had some share in his own scheme of life. When he lost the bronze pearls in Paris, I know that he fretted like a child for a broken toy. It was not their value—not at all. He called them his black angels—in jest, of course—and I think that he believed some of his own good luck went with them.
This was the state of things in the month of May when Okyada, the Japanese, came from London and took up his residence at the Manor. Ean told me nothing; he never referred again to the subject of his lost pearls. Much of his time was spent in his study, where he occupied himself with the book he was writing upon the legends of the Adriatic. His leisure he gave to his motor and his observatory.
I began to believe that whatever anxiety troubled him had passed; and in this belief I should have continued but for the alarming events of which I now write. And this brings me to the middle of the summer—to be exact, the fifteenth day of June in the year 1904.
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH HARRIET FABOS CONTINUES HER NARRATIVE.
Ean, I remember, had come in from a little trip to Cambridge about five o’clock in the afternoon. We had tea together, and afterwards he called his servant, Okyada, to the study, and they were closeted there almost until dinner time. In the drawing-room later on, Ean proved to be in the brightest of spirits. He spoke, among other things, of some of his deserted hobbies, and expressed regret that he had given up his yacht.
“I’m getting old before my time, Harriet,” he said. “The pantaloon and slippered stage is a tragedy for thirty-three. I think I shall get another boat, sister. If you are good, I will take you to the Adriatic again.”
I promised to be very good; and then, laughing together, we chatted of the old days in Greece and Turkey, of our voyages to South America, and of sunny days in Spain. I had never seen him brighter. When we went to bed he kissed me twice, and then said such an extraordinary thing that I could not help but remember it:
“Okyada and I will be working late in the observatory,” he said; “there may be one or two men about assisting us. Don’t be afraid if you hear a noise, Harriet. You will know it’s all right, and that I am aware of it.”
Now, Ean is so very frank with me usually, looks me so straight in the face, and tells me so plainly what he means, that his evident attempt to conceal something from me upon this occasion, his averted gaze and forced manner, could not but awake my just curiosity. I did not press him at the moment, but in my own room I thought much upon it all, and was quite unable to sleep. Books were of no help to me, nor did my habitual self-composure help me. Recalling his words, and trying to fit a meaning to them, I went more than once to my window and looked out over the pleasure garden beneath it. Deepdene, as many know, is an old Tudor mansion with three sides of its ancient quadrangle still standing. My own rooms are in the right-hand wing; the pleasure garden is below them, and beyond its high wall is the open park which rims right down to the Bury road. Let me ask anyone what my feelings should have been, when chancing to look out over the garden at one o’clock that morning I saw, as plainly as my eyes have ever seen, the figures of three men crouching beneath the wall and evidently as fearful of discovery as I was of their presence.