‘You would be prepared to swear to him in a court of law, if required?’
‘Absolutely prepared,’ I said.
Here the door was opened cautiously from the garden. Marsigli thrust past the servant, and disappeared within.
Now or never! Lavender and his underlings darted down the crazy stairs and across the road. I followed at my best pace, very vital excitement gripping me, in time to see him knock, await the opening of the door, and—then a rush. The three were inside so quickly that, before I could join them, the servant—a middle-aged, hard-featured, somewhat shrewish-looking French-woman—was safe in the custody of the younger detective, Lavender and the other pushing on for the house.
‘If she attempts to scream, throttle her,’ Lavender said, in a sufficiently loud aside to have a wholesomely restraining effect upon the captive. ‘Now, sir,’ to me, ‘as little noise as possible in getting upstairs, please.’
And he glanced meaningly, though not unkindly, at my lame leg.
I crept after them as quietly as I could, and had reason; for on reaching the landing we heard voices, a man’s and a woman’s, high in altercation.
The door of the front drawing-room, I should explain, stood open, the front room communicating with the back by folding doors. These were closed, and within them the quarrel took place; but so loudly that, as we advanced, I could distinguish nearly every word.
‘It is impossible. I tell you he is still away.’
‘No one else can have taken them. No one else has a key to this sweet little nest—and so the game is up, my child, by now the fraud discovered. You are trapped—trapped!’