The inspector made a thorough search of the basement premises, and again questioned the fair-haired parlour-maid who was Lily’s successor. She vowed that she had latched all the windows, though within herself she feared that she had overlooked the fact that one of the windows was unlatched in the morning. Yet what was the use of confessing it, she thought.
So there being no trace of any intruder, the inspector walked back to the station, while Mr Barclay smiled at the great hubbub, little dreaming that in place of that precious map there reposed in the envelope only a plain piece of paper.
That afternoon Dick Allen arrived at Willowden. Gray was away motoring in Scotland, where he had some little “business” of the usual shady character to attend to. Freda had gone to Hatfield, and it was an hour before she returned. During that hour Allen smoked and read in the pretty summerhouse at the end of the old-world garden, so full of climbing roses and gay borders.
Suddenly he heard her voice, and looking up from his paper saw her in a big hat and filmy lemon-coloured gown.
He waved to her, rose, and met her at the French window of the old-fashioned dining-room.
“Well?” she asked. “What luck, Dick? I worried a lot about you last night. I felt somehow that you’d had an accident and to-day—I don’t know how it was—I became filled with apprehension and had to go out. I’m much relieved to see you. What’s happened?”
“Nothing, my dear Freda,” laughed the good-looking scoundrel. “There was just a little contretemps—that’s all.”
“Have you got the map?”
“Sure,” he laughed.
“Ah! When you go out to get a thing you never fail to bring it home,” she said, with a smile. “You’re just like Gordon. You’ve both got the impudence of the very devil himself.”