The False Faces Part 50

"Is just finis.h.i.+ng breakfast. He will be down directly. Please be seated, make yourself entirely at ease. And will you excuse me--?"

"With pleasure," Lanyard a.s.sured him, his gravity unbroken.

A doubt clouded Mr. Blensop's bright eyes, but its transit was instantaneous. He turned forthwith to join the iron-gray man before the portrait which concealed the safe.

"And now, Mr. Stone," said Mr. Blensop, with indulgence.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Stone quietly, "if you'll be good enough to show me how this contraption works, maybe I'll find out something interesting, maybe not."

Mr. Blensop proceeded to oblige by operating the lever and sliding aside the portrait.

"Thanks," said Mr. Stone, producing a magnifying gla.s.s from a waistcoat pocket and beginning to peer myopically at the face of the safe. "I take it n.o.body's been pawing over this since the late, as you might say, unpleasantness?"

"Not a soul has touched it. By Colonel Stanistreet's order it was covered as soon as we found it had been tampered with."

"_Um-m_," Mr. Stone acknowledged, bending close to his work.

Partially, perhaps, by way of administering an urbane rebuke to Lanyard for his readiness to dispense with his society, Mr. Blensop remained in the neighbourhood of Mr. Stone, hovering round him like a domesticated humming-bird.

"Do you find anything?" he enquired, when Stone straightened up.

"Fingerprints a-plenty," Mr. Stone admitted with a hint of temper--"a slew of the d.a.m.n things. Looks like you must've called in the neighbours to help make a good show. However, we'll see what we can make of 'em."

He conjured from some recess in his clothing a squat bottle, from another a stopper in which was fitted a blowpipe, joined the two together, approached the safe with one end of the pipe between his lips and sprayed it with a thin film of white powder, the contents of the bottle.

"I say, do tell me what that's for?"

"That," said Mr. Stone patiently, "is to make the fingerprints stand out, so we can get a good likeness of 'em."

He put the bottle aside, blinked at the safe approvingly, and by further exercise of powers of legerdemain materialized a pocket kodak and a flashlight pistol.

"Can't I help you?" Blensop offered eagerly. "I used to be rather a dab at amateur photography, you know."

"Well, I'm kind of stuck on pressing the b.u.t.ton myself," Stone confessed, adjusting the focus. "But if you want to work that flashlight, I don't mind."

"Delighted," Mr. Blensop a.s.serted. "How does it go, now?"

"Like this." Stone set his camera down to demonstrate. "Now just stand behind me," he concluded, "and pull the trigger when I say 'now'."

"I'll do my best, but--I say--will it bang?"

Stone had taken up the camera once more. His sole answer was a grunt upon which his hearers placed two distinct interpretations--Lanyard's affording him considerable gratification.

"If you're ready," said Stone--"_now_"

Mr. Blensop squinted unbecomingly and pressed the trigger. A vivid flare lifted from the pan of the pistol, and winked out in a cloud of vapour, slowly dissipating.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, sir--that's all of that." Stone stowed the camera away about his person and from another cranny produced a small cardboard box of gla.s.s slides, one of which he offered. "Now if you'll just run your fingers through your hair and rest them on this slide, light but steady...."

"What for?" Blensop demanded with a giggle of nervous reluctance. "You don't think I'm the thief, do you?"

"No, sir, I don't. But if I haven't got your fingerprints, how am I going to tell them from the thief's?"

"Oh, I see," Blensop said with a note of allayed apprehension, and put himself on record.

The door opening to admit Colonel Stanistreet, Lanyard rose. At sight of him the Englishman checked and stared enquiringly, his eyes shadowed by careworn brows; for it was apparent that, if the events of the night had not depressed the spirits of the secretary, his employer had known little sleep or none since the burglary.

"Colonel Stanistreet," Blensop said melodiously, abandoning Stone to his unsupervised devices, "this is Mr. Ember, the gentleman who called last night before you got home. It appears he is the person who sent us that telegram from Edgartown day before yesterday."

"Indeed? Ember is not the name with which the message was signed."

"The message was purposely left unsigned," Lanyard explained.

Stanistreet nodded approval. "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Ember," he said, offering a hand. "Be seated. I am most anxious first to express our grat.i.tude, next to learn how you came by your information."

"You will find it an interesting story."

"No doubt of that." Stanistreet took the desk chair, opened a cigar humidor, and offered it. "I shall be even more interested, however," he said with an evanescent trace of humour, "to know who the devil you are, sir."

"That is something I am prepared to prove to your satisfaction."

"If you will be so good.... But excuse me for one moment." Stanistreet turned in his chair. "Mr. Stone?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you finished with the safe? If so, I want my secretary to check over its contents carefully and make sure nothing else is missing."

"I'm all through with it, Colonel Stanistreet. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to mouse around and see if I can nose out anything else that's useful."

"That shall be entirely as you will. Now, Blensop"--Stanistreet nodded to the secretary--"let us make certain...."

"Yes, sir."

Blithely Mr. Blensop addressed himself to the safe.

"There has been an accident of some sort, Colonel Stanistreet?" Lanyard enquired civilly, nodding toward the shattered French window.

"A burglary, sir."

"The criminal escaped--?"

Stanistreet nodded. "Our watchman surprised him, and was shot for his pains--not seriously, I'm happy to say. The burglar got himself tangled up in that window, but extricated in time, and went over the garden wall before we could determine which way he had taken."

"I trust you lost nothing of value?"

Stanistreet shrugged. "Unhappily, we did--a diamond necklace, the property of my sister-in-law, and--ah--a doc.u.ment we could ill afford to part with.... But you offered to show me credentials, I believe."