“That’s true.”
“So you never saw their faces?”
“Unfortunately I did not. From the cut of their clothes, however, and the appearance of their hands, I judged them to be men of a much superior type to the common housebreaker. Their hands were as white as my own, and their clothes were as good as those I’m wearing at this moment.”
“That’s interesting. Now, tell me what you did.”
Massey described how he had covered the men with his revolver, and had ordered them to raise their hands and stand with their backs to the wall.
“They obeyed without a word,” he said. “I thought I’d cowed them, and that I only had to ring for help in order to make my capture complete. But evidently they had posted a fifth man outside the window, to keep watch, and just as I was about to ring the bell—this bell on the desk—the scoundrel fired at me through the window and broke my wrist.”
“Did you ever see the fifth man?”
“No, I should never have known of his existence had he not fired. It was very clever on their part to leave him out there.”
“I see. What happened next?”
“Then for a moment the four masked men seemed almost as startled as myself—at least, so it appeared to me, although I had troubles of my own just then, and was hardly in a position to study them at my leisure. At any rate, panic seized them, I suppose, owing to the fear that the shot would be heard all over the house. The pain of my shattered wrist made it impossible for[Pg 29] me to do anything more. I was helpless, and the jewels were at their mercy, but, to my amazement, they seemed to forget all about them.”