CHAPTER XI.

BURGLARS AT THE YARD

“Sunny,” said Larry to his servitor, “London is a terrible city.”

“Indeed it is, sir,” said Mr. Patrick Sunny.

“But it has one bright, radiant feature which redeems it from utter desolation and abomination.”

“I think you’re right, sir,” said Sunny. “I’ve often noticed that myself, sir. I’m very fond of the picture houses myself.”

“I’m not talking about the picture houses,” snapped Larry. “Nothing is further from my thoughts than the cinema houses. I am talking of something different, something spiritual.”

“Would you like a whisky and soda, sir?” asked Sunny, at last securing a tangible line.

“Get out!” roared Larry, bubbling with laughter. “Get out, you horrible materialist! Go to the pictures.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, “but it’s rather late.”

“Then go to bed,” said Larry. “Stop a bit. Bring me my writing-case.”

He was wearing his favourite indoor kit, a dressing-gown, a pair of old cricketing trousers, and a soft shirt, and now he filled his polished brier with a sense of physical well-being.

“Believe me, Sunny,” said Larry Holt impressively, “there are many worse places than London on a bright spring day, when your heart----”

There was a faint rat-tat-tat on the outer door. “A visitor at this time of night!” said Larry in surprise. It could not be from Scotland Yard, because Scotland Yard use the telephone freely, a little too freely sometimes.

“I think there’s somebody at the door, sir,” said Sunny.

“That’s a fine bit of reasoning on your part,” said Larry. “Open it.”

He waited and heard a brief exchange of questions. The visitor was a woman; and before he could guess who it was, the door opened and Diana Ward came in. He saw by her face that something had happened, and went to meet her.

“What is the matter?” he asked quickly. “That man didn’t follow you?”

“What man?” she demanded in surprise.

“Flash Fred.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know whether it was Flash Fred,” she said grimly, “but if he is somebody particularly unpleasant, it was probably he.”

“Sit down. Would you like some coffee? I’m just going to have a cup. Sunny, get two coffees.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sunny, and then, significantly, “Do you want me to go out to the pictures, sir?”

Larry blushed angrily.

“Get some coffee, you--you--you----” he spluttered. “Now, what is it?”

The girl told the story of her adventure without preliminary. Larry listened with a serious face.

“You say he was big? That rules out Flash Fred,” he said. “Do you think it was a burglar--somebody who had broken in and whom your arrival interrupted?”

“I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “In fact, I know that it was a much more serious attack. When I got back to my flat, I went through all the rooms. In the dining room, the room to which I would have gone first in ordinary circumstances, I found a long laundry basket.”

“A laundry basket?” he repeated in surprise.

She nodded.

“It was lined with a sort of quilting, very thick, and the lid was padded in the same way. Inside of it was this.”

She laid down the object she had been carrying. It looked like an airman’s cap, except that there was no opening for the mouth.

He took it up and sniffed, though there was no need for this, for he had noticed the sweet scent when she had come into the room.

“It is saturated in chloroform,” he said. “Of course, this would not make you entirely insensible, but it would have quieted you.”

He paced the room, his hands in his pockets, his chin on his chest.

“Did you find anything else?”

“When I got out into the street,” she said, “a laundry van was just moving off. I noticed it particularly, because I thought all the time that the word ‘laundry’--and that was all the inscription the van bore--had been written by an amateur, and very badly done.”

“I can’t understand it,” said Larry, bewildered. “The brute couldn’t have got you away. He must have had some assistants in the house.”

“I don’t agree with you,” she said quietly. “This man was terribly strong. I felt like an infant in his arms, and it would have been a very simple matter for him to slide the basket down the stairs and carry it out across the pavement with the help of the man who was driving the van.”

“But why you?” he asked, bewildered. “Why should they bother about you?”

She did not reply immediately.

“I am wondering,” she said at last, “whether I have by accident stumbled upon some clue which incriminates the Stuart murderers. Perhaps, without knowing that I have such a clue, I am in possession of information which they wish to suppress.”

Larry was very thoughtful.

“Just wait here a little while and I’ll change,” he said, and disappeared from the room.

The girl looked round the cosy flat appreciatively and Sunny came in, bearing a tray, first stopping outside the door to cough loudly, to the intense annoyance of Larry, who heard him from the other room.

“Will you have sugar, miss?” asked Sunny solemnly, and when she nodded: “Some ladies don’t like sugar. It makes them fat.”

“I’m not very much afraid of getting fat,” she smiled.

“No, ma’am, you wouldn’t be,” said Sunny agreeably.

On the way to the flat she asked Larry laughingly if Sunny agreed with everything he said.

“With everything I’ve ever said,” said Larry. “He drives me to despair sometimes. I have yet to find the subject upon which Sunny has an independent, definite opinion.”

Later he was to discover there was at least one matter in which Sunny had a mind of his own, but that time was distant.

They came to the apartment in Charing Cross Road, and Larry began his search. He had brought a flash lamp with him, and inspected every stair, without, however, coming upon a single clue that would identify the mysterious assailant.

“Now we’ll have a look at your room.”

He examined the laundry basket, which the girl had exactly described.

“Nothing new here,” he said. “See if anything is missing.”

She made an independent search and came back to him in the sitting room with a puzzled face.

“My green coat, an overcoat I wear, and a hat have disappeared.”

“A distinctive hat?” he asked quickly.

“What do you mean by a distinctive hat?” she asked in surprise.

“Is it rather striking?”

“It is rather,” she smiled. “It is a golden-yellow hat which I wear with my green coat.”

He nodded.

“Have you worn it to the Yard?” he asked.

“Often,” she replied in surprise.

“Then that’s it,” said he. “Come down with me. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

She followed him into the street, and he went into the nearest telephone booth and rang up Scotland Yard and got the officer on duty at the door.

“Has Miss Ward been in to-night? It is Inspector Holt speaking,” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “She’s just gone out.”

Larry groaned.

“But I haven’t been to Scotland Yard,” she said in surprise.

“Somebody has impersonated you!” he said shortly.

They were in the grim building on the Thames Embankment within a few minutes, and the door of 47 was apparently untampered with. He opened the door and switched on the lights.

“Oh, yes,” he said softly, for the doors of the cupboard wherein he had kept the clues concerning the death of Stuart hung broken upon their hinges.

He pulled out the tray and gave a rapid glance at its contents.

The Braille writing had disappeared!