Malcolm Sage, Detective Part 25

The description that Mrs. Comminge is able to give of her a.s.sailant is rather lacking in detail, owing to the shock she experienced at his sudden appearance. It would appear that the man is of medium height and slight of build. He wore a cap and a black handkerchief tied across his face just beneath his eyes, which entirely masked his features. With this very inadequate description of the ruffian the police have perforce to set to work upon the very difficult task of tracing him.

For some time Malcolm Sage pondered over the cutting, then rising he replaced the volume and rang for Thompson.

An hour later Tims was carrying him along in the direction of Sir Roger Glanedale's house at a good thirty-five miles an hour.

The Home Park was an Elizabethan mansion that had been acquired by Sir Roger Glanedale out of enormous profits made upon the sale of margarine. As Tims brought the car up before the front entrance with an impressive sweep, the hall-door was thrown open by the butler, who habitually strove by an excessive dignity of demeanour to remove from his mental palate the humiliating flavour of margarine.

Malcolm Sage's card considerably mitigated the impression made upon Mr. Hibbs's mind by the swing with which Tims had brought the car up to the door.

Malcolm Sage was shown into the morning-room and told that her ladys.h.i.+p would see him in a few minutes. He was busy in the contemplation of the garden when the door opened and Lady Glanedale entered.

He bowed and then, as Lady Glanedale seated herself at a small table, he took the nearest chair.

She was a little woman, some eight inches too short for the air she a.s.sumed, fair, good-looking; but with a hard, set mouth. No one had ever permitted her to forget that she had married margarine.

"You have called about the burglary?" she enquired, in a tone she might have adopted to a plumber who had come to see to a leak in the bath.

Malcolm Sage bowed.

"Perhaps you will give me the details," he said. "Kindly be as brief as possible," his "incipient Bolshevism" manifesting itself in his manner.

Lady Glanedale elevated her eyebrows; but, as Malcolm Sage's eyes were not upon her, she proceeded to tell her story.

"About one o'clock this morning I was awakened to find a man in my bedroom," she began. "He was standing between the bedstead and the farther window, his face masked. He had a pistol in one hand, which he pointed towards me, and an electric torch in the other. I sat up in bed and stared at him. 'If you call out I shall kill you,' he said. I asked him what he wanted. He replied that if I gave him my jewel-case and did not call for help, he would not do me any harm.

"Realising that I was helpless, I got out of bed, put on a wrapper, opened a small safe I have set in the wall, and handed him one of the two jewel-cases I possess.

"He then made me promise that I would not ring or call out for a quarter of an hour, and he disappeared out of the window.

"At the end of a quarter of an hour I summoned help, and my stepson, the butler, and several other servants came to my room. We telephoned for the police, and after breakfast we telephoned to the insurance company."

For fully a minute there was silence. Malcolm Sage decided that Lady Glanedale certainly possessed the faculty of telling a story with all the events in their proper sequence. He found himself with very few questions to put to her.

"Can you describe the man?" he asked as he mechanically turned over the leaves of a book on a table beside him.

"Not very well," she replied. "I saw little more than a silhouette against the window. He was of medium height, slight of build and I should say young."

"That seems to agree with the description of the man who robbed Mrs.

Comminge," he said as if to himself.

"That is what the inspector said," remarked Lady Glanedale.

"His voice?"

"Was rather husky, as if he were trying to disguise it."

"Was it the voice of a man of refinement or otherwise?"

"I should describe it as middle-cla.s.s," was the sn.o.bbish response.

"The mask?"

"It looked like a silk handkerchief tied across his nose. It was dark in tone; but I could get only a dim impression."

Malcolm Sage inclined his head comprehendingly.

"You know Mrs. Comminge?"

"Intimately."

"You mentioned two jewel-cases," he said.

"The one stolen contained those I mostly wear," replied Lady Glanedale; "in the other I keep some very valuable family jewels."

"What was the value of those stolen?"

"About 8,000 pounds," she replied, "possibly more. I should explain, perhaps, that Sir Roger was staying in town last night, and so far I have not been able to get him on the telephone. He was to have stayed at the Ritzton; but apparently he found them full and went elsewhere."

"You have no suspicion as to who it was that entered your room?"

"None whatever," said Lady Glanedale.

"The police have already been?" he enquired, as he examined with great intentness a rose he had taken from a bowl beside him.

"Yes, they came shortly after we telephoned. They gave instructions that nothing was to be touched in the room, and no one was to go near the ground beneath the windows."

Malcolm Sage nodded approvingly, and returned the rose to the bowl.

"And now," he said, "I think I should like to see the room. By the way, I take it that you keep your safe locked?"

"Always," said Lady Glanedale.

"Where do you keep the key?"

"In the bottom right-hand drawer of my dressing-table, under a pile of handkerchiefs."

"As soon as you can I should like to see a list of the jewels," said Malcolm Sage, as he followed Lady Glanedale towards the door.

"My maid is copying it out now," she replied, and led the way up the staircase, along a heavily-carpeted corridor, at the end of which she threw open a door giving access to a bedroom.

Malcolm Sage entered and gave a swift look about him, seeming to note and catalogue every detail. It was a large room, with two windows looking out on to a lawn. On the right was a door, which, Lady Glanedale explained, led to Sir Roger's dressing-room.

He walked over to the window near the dressing-room and looked out.

"That is the window he must have entered by; he went out that way,"

explained Lady Glanedale.

"You spoke of a stepson," said Malcolm Sage. "He is a man, I presume?"