Apparently Mr. Barch was in a state of violent excitement and did not at once notice the presence of the General or his son.
"I say, dash it all! what's up? What are you bounders kicking up all this noise about? And why on earth hasn't one of you answered my ring?" he blurted out, addressing the nearer of the two footmen. "I've pulled that dashed bell rope until I'm tired. I say, nip downstairs, one of you, and tell that valet chap to bring back my clothes, and not to bother about brushing them until after I go to bed. Mr. Harry promised to lend me a suit of evenin' togs, but went off without doing so, blow him! And I haven't a blessed livin' stitch to put on!"
"Good Lud, Barch! I do beg a thousand pardons, old chap!" exclaimed the General's hopeful. "Sorry I forgot about the evenin' togs, dear boy. What a beast of a hole you'd have been in if I hadn't come back. Eh, what?"
"Well, if it could be any worse than the one I've been in for the past five minutes it would be a marvel, dear boy," responded Cleek, with lamblike innocence. "Always was a thoughtless beggar, don't you know. Took off my blessed clothes, and let your valet toddle off with 'em to brush 'em, as he suggested, before I once thought about the evenin' ones you'd promised to lend me."
"Harry's valet?" It was the General who spoke. "Do I understand you to say, Mr. Barch, that you gave your clothes to somebody whom you took for my son's valet? In the name of reason, where did you get that impression of the man? I ask, because Harry has no special valet. Hawkins, here"—indicating the second footman—"valets both my son and myself; but having only me to look after this evening, as we did not expect Harry to return in time for dinner, he has been in attendance upon me up to the present moment, so it most certainly could not have been he."
"Oh, no; chap wasn't a bit like him, General. Wasn't like the other footman, either. Tallish chap, fair-haired, little turned-up 'ginger' moustache. Was dressed in evening clothes and wore a black-and-yellow striped waistcoat."
"That's the man! That's the man!" trumpeted forth Harry Raynor and Lord St. Ulmer in concert, the latter's excited voice ringing out from the room into which, unfortunately, Cleek could not, of course, see. "That's the identical fellow, pater; Barch has described him to a hair," went on young Raynor, addressing his father. "Sneak thief—that was his little game, St. Ulmer. Nicked my friend Barch's clothes and would have nicked yours, too, if he hadn't come a cropper. Got down the staircase there, and dodged into one of the empty rooms, I'll lay my life, pater, and as soon as you came up and left the coast clear, slipped out of the house and got away."
In the game of life chance is an important factor; and chance, as much as anything else, favoured Cleek in this particular instance, for it was his especial aim to lull Lord St. Ulmer's suspicions of the mysterious "man" and to quiet any fear he might possess of that man's possible connection with the police. It need scarcely be recorded, therefore, that he hastened to second Harry Raynor's suggestion relative to the intruder being nothing more nor less than a sneak thief, who had taken precisely the mode mentioned of making his escape, and backed it up with a panicky sort of appeal to the General to "have the house searched and all the empty rooms below stairs looked into on the off-chance that the fellow hadn't really got away as yet."
The suggestion was acted upon forthwith. Every vacant room was searched, and it was in this matter that chance favoured Cleek so signally, for it was found that a window in one of the lower rooms had been left wide open, and as that window communicated with a veranda, from which a short flight of steps led down to the garden at a point where the walk was asphalted and could not be expected to retain a footprint, there would seem to be no question of where and how the man had made his escape.
Dinner, owing to this interruption, together with the unexpected return of Mr. Harry and the awkward position in which Philip Barch had been placed, was put back for half an hour; and Cleek, left to himself, proceeded to dress himself in the clothes with which young Raynor had supplied him. But for all his cleverness in turning suspicion into another channel, he was not best pleased with the result of the adventure, for he was faced with the fact that he had failed to accomplish what he had set out to do, and that his efforts concerning Lord St. Ulmer had been absolutely barren of results. He had not succeeded in seeing his lordship's face, he had not succeeded in discovering how this man, of all men, should have come into possession of the Jetanola labels, or, indeed, anything that had belonged to Ferdinand Lovetski. Ferdinand Lovetski had been done to death in Paris only seven years ago, and his lordship had been—or was said to have been—more than twice that number of years in Argentina.