Afterwards he returned to the Beacon Hotel, arriving there just as the sleepy servants were astir.
He breakfasted early, but scarcely had he finished when he was called by the waiter to the telephone.
It was Sylvia who spoke. In a state of greatest agitation she told him that burglars had broken into the Hall in the early hours and had stolen her mother’s rope of pearls, worth over twenty thousand pounds, and also nearly the whole of Madame Valdavia’s fine jewels, which she had worn at the fancy dress dinner.
“We are all horrified, Geoffrey,” she went on. “Mr. Glover has just gone out in the car to tell the police. What can we do? Can you come up here? Mother wants to see you.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” was Falconer’s reply. “Please excuse me, as I’m terribly busy to-day. But tell your mother, in strict secrecy, that I have a notion that she will get her pearls back again.”
“What do you mean, Geoffrey?” asked the girl’s high-pitched voice.
“What I’ve said, Sylvia. Remain patient. I have to go up to town at once. I’ll telephone you again at two o’clock this afternoon. To-morrow I shall not be so busy on wireless, and I’ll run down and see you all—and also meet Mr. Glover,” he added with a laugh.
“But—but——”
He only laughed, and put up the receiver.
The truth was that, owing to Geoffrey’s message to the wireless amateur in Hampstead, the bucolic-looking individual from Crowborough had been detained by the police when he had stepped out of the early train at Victoria, and upon him there had been found the whole of the stolen property.