Something New Part 36

"On the contrary, to-night is the one night when there ought to be no risk at all."

"After what happened last night?"

"Because of what happened last night. Do you imagine Mr. Baxter will dare to stir from his bed after that? If ever there was a chance of getting this thing finished, it will be to-night."

"You're quite right. I never looked at it in that way. Baxter wouldn't risk a second disaster. I'll certainly make a success of it this time."

Joan raised her eyebrows.

"I don't quite understand you, Mr. Marson. Do you propose to try to get the scarab to-night?"

"Yes. It will be as easy as--"

"Are you forgetting that, by the terms of our agreement, it is my turn?"

"You surely don't intend to hold me to that?"

"Certainly I do."

"But, good heavens, consider my position! Do you seriously expect me to lie in bed while you do all the work, and then to take a half share in the reward?"

"I do."

"It's ridiculous!"

"It's no more ridiculous than that I should do the same. Mr.

Marson, there's no use in our going over all this again. We settled it long ago."

Joan refused to discuss the matter further, leaving Ashe in a condition of anxious misery comparable only to that which, as night began to draw near, gnawed the vitals of the Efficient Baxter.

Breakfast at Blandings Castle was an informal meal. There was food and drink in the long dining-hall for such as were energetic enough to come down and get it; but the majority of the house party breakfasted in their rooms, Lord Emsworth, whom nothing in the world would have induced to begin the day in the company of a crowd of his relations, most of whom he disliked, setting them the example.

When, therefore, Baxter, yielding to Nature after having remained awake until the early morning, fell asleep at nine o'clock, n.o.body came to rouse him. He did not ring his bell, so he was not disturbed; and he slept on until half past eleven, by which time, it being Sunday morning and the house party including one bishop and several of the minor clergy, most of the occupants of the place had gone off to church.

Baxter shaved and dressed hastily, for he was in state of nervous apprehension. He blamed himself for having lain in bed so long.

When every minute he was away might mean the loss of the scarab, he had pa.s.sed several hours in dreamy sloth. He had wakened with a presentiment. Something told him the scarab had been stolen in the night, and he wished now that he had risked all and kept guard.

The house was very quiet as he made his way rapidly to the hall.

As he pa.s.sed a window he perceived Lord Emsworth, in an un-Sabbatarian suit of tweeds and bearing a garden fork--which must have pained the bishop--bending earnestly over a flower bed; but he was the only occupant of the grounds, and indoors there was a feeling of emptiness. The hall had that Sunday-morning air of wanting to be left to itself, and disapproving of the entry of anything human until lunch time, which can be felt only by a guest in a large house who remains at home when his fellows have gone to church.

The portraits on the walls, especially the one of the Countess of Emsworth in the character of Venus rising from the sea, stared at Baxter as he entered, with cold reproof. The very chairs seemed distant and unfriendly; but Baxter was in no mood to appreciate their att.i.tude. His conscience slept. His mind was occupied, to the exclusion of all other things, by the scarab and its probable fate. How disastrously remiss it had been of him not to keep guard last night! Long before he opened the museum door he was feeling the absolute certainty that the worst had happened.

It had. The card which announced that here was an Egyptian scarab of the reign of Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty, presented by J.

Preston Peters, Esquire, still lay on the cabinet in its wonted place; but now its neat lettering was false and misleading. The scarab was gone.

For all that he had expected this, for all his premonition of disaster, it was an appreciable time before the Efficient Baxter rallied from the blow. He stood transfixed, goggling at the empty place.

Then his mind resumed its functions. All, he perceived, was not yet lost. Baxter the watchdog must retire, to be succeeded by Baxter the sleuthhound. He had been unable to prevent the theft of the scarab, but he might still detect the thief.

For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a clew from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar ash; but Doctor Watson has to have it taken out for him and dusted, and exhibited clearly, with a label attached.

The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing manner at that humble follower of the great investigator; but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height of a Scotland Yard bungler.

Baxter was a Doctor Watson. What he wanted was a clew; but it is so hard for the novice to tell what is a clew and what is not.

And then he happened to look down--and there on the floor was a clew that n.o.body could have overlooked.

Baxter saw it, but did not immediately recognize it for what it was. What he saw, at first, was not a clew, but just a mess. He had a tidy soul and abhorred messes, and this was a particularly messy mess. A considerable portion of the floor was a sea of red paint. The can from which it had flowed was lying on its side--near the wall. He had noticed that the smell of paint had seemed particularly pungent, but had attributed this to a new freshet of energy on the part of Lord Emsworth. He had not perceived that paint had been spilled.

"Pah!" said Baxter.

Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clew.

A footmark! No less. A crimson footmark on the polished wood! It was as clear and distinct as though it had been left there for the purpose of a.s.sisting him. It was a feminine footmark, the print of a slim and pointed shoe.

This perplexed Baxter. He had looked on the siege of the scarab as an exclusively male affair. But he was not perplexed long.

What could be simpler than that Mr. Peters should have enlisted female aid? The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Probably she makes a better purloiner of scarabs. At any rate, there the footprint was, unmistakably feminine.

Inspiration came to him. Aline Peters had a maid! What more likely than that secretly she should be a hireling of Mr. Peters, on whom he had now come to look as a man of the blackest and most sinister character? Mr. Peters was a collector; and when a collector makes up his mind to secure a treasure, he employs, Baxter knew, every possible means to that end.

Baxter was now in a state of great excitement. He was hot on the scent and his brain was working like a buzz saw in an ice box.

According to his reasoning, if Aline Peters' maid had done this thing there should be red paint in the hall marking her retreat, and possibly a faint stain on the stairs leading to the servants'

bedrooms.

He hastened from the museum and subjected the hall to a keen scrutiny. Yes; there was red paint on the carpet. He pa.s.sed through the green-baize door and examined the stairs. On the bottom step there was a faint but conclusive stain of crimson!

He was wondering how best to follow up this clew when he perceived Ashe coming down the stairs. Ashe, like Baxter, and as the result of a night disturbed by anxious thoughts, had also overslept himself.

There are moments when the giddy excitement of being right on the trail causes the amateur--or Watsonian--detective to be incautious. If Baxter had been wise he would have achieved his object--the getting a glimpse of Joan's shoes--by a devious and snaky route. As it was, zeal getting the better of prudence, he rushed straight on. His early suspicion of Ashe had been temporarily obscured. Whatever Ashe's claims to be a suspect, it had not been his footprint Baxter had seen in the museum.

"Here, you!" said the Efficient Baxter excitedly.

"Sir?"

"The shoes!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I wish to see the servants' shoes. Where are they?"

"I expect they have them on, sir."

"Yesterday's shoes, man--yesterday's shoes. Where are they?"

"Where are the shoes of yesteryear?" murmured Ashe. "I should say at a venture, sir, that they would be in a large basket somewhere near the kitchen. Our genial knife-and-shoe boy collects them, I believe, at early dawn."