“I could wear my old sweater and cap, and ride my bicycle, and it would be natural for me to rest anywhere along the road, or even go anywhere to ask my way.” Roger caught the spirit of the idea.
“I merely want you to ‘look over the land,’ and see how things look,” Grover insisted. “Then after the staff goes, come back and report. That gives you time for rest between riding out and back.”
“After the staff goes—Do you still think?——”
“I have to think everything and nothing until I get a lead.”
Roger took his time riding the dozen miles to the easily located point of espionage. To get there by mid-morning was best.
The estate itself, walled in with ivy-covered stone, quite an extensive acreage, he reached as the sun approached the zenith.
Near what seemed to be a servants’ gateway he sat down by his reclining bicycle.
From the grass beside the gateway he could see, along the driveway, the beautifully rolled tennis court, the sweep of lovely lawn, from the main gateway, winding up to a grand, white mansion, people moving about on wide verandas or swimming in a distant pool.
“Pretty swell,” Roger told himself musingly. “Not the sort of a place to look for kidnapers or jewel thieves. Unless—as Grover is always so fond of saying: ‘I dig past appearances that can be falsified, to the heart of truth that can’t be changed.’”
He turned it over in his mind. Of course, it would not be past reason that a prosperous man, with a millionaire’s residence, might smuggle gems, even make a man his prisoner to secure a gem with the world-wide reputation Doctor Ryder had ascribed to the Eye of Om.