CHAPTER XXI.

A MISSING PICTURE

“Oh, I say!” cried Jack. “This is topping!”

His admiring gaze was set upon a photograph in my portfolio of Madeira snapshots. It represented a slender girl, arms raised, poised in the act of diving from a rock into the clear water below. In justice to the beauty of the model and not out of any desire to fan my artistic vanity, I agreed with Jack.

The original of the study, seated on the edge of a table, slim legs swinging restlessly, surveyed the work with less enthusiasm.

“I look painfully bare,” said Nanette severely.

“Can I have a copy, Decies?” Jack asked.

“Please say no,” came promptly from Nanette. “If you want a photograph, Jack, I had several good ones taken in Switzerland.”

We examined other items of my collection.

“Hallo!” said Jack. “Who is the sportsman with the toothy smile?”

He was frowning at a snapshot of Nanette coiled up in a deck chair. Seated very near to her, in smiling tête-à-tête, was a man whose white sun helmet cast a dark shadow upon his features.

“Captain Slattery,” Nanette replied. “You don’t know him, Jack.”

She turned over the print, giving me a swift glance. Its full significance rather missed me at the time. I merely supposed that this picture of the man we had known as “Captain Slattery” conjured up memories of O’Shea. And memories of O’Shea almost invariably brought about sudden changes of mood in little Nanette.

Later, however, having induced Jack to telephone to somebody about something or another, she drew me aside.

“Captain Slattery is in London!” she said, speaking with suppressed excitement. “This was what I really came to tell you.”

“What!” I exclaimed.

In the days that had lapsed since the disappearance of the notorious Adolf Zara, alias Captain Slattery, I had begun to share O’Shea’s view that this greatly daring man had perished at sea.

“I received this note from him last night,” Nanette went on. “And I don’t know what to do.”

Opening the envelope which she handed to me, I drew out a single sheet of unheaded, undated paper having a cutting pinned to it. The note read as follows:

I learn from the appended picture that you are in London. If you can forgive me for my behaviour and will consent to see me for a moment before I leave England, put a message in the Personal Column of the _Daily Planet_ and I will arrange the rest. I can never forget you--so try to be kind.

J. Slattery.

The picture referred to was cut from the _Daily Planet_, and showed Nanette as one of a group at a dance party--I forget where.

“How did he learn your address?” I asked.

“He didn’t,” said Nanette. “Look at the envelope. It was forwarded from the office of the _Planet_.”

She watched me almost pathetically, and I divined the nature of the problem that was disturbing Nanette’s mind.

“I simply couldn’t do it!” she burst out. “It isn’t as though he were really a criminal. He _is_ a criminal, I suppose, in a way. But political crimes leave me rather cold. And, you see--he trusts me.”

“Do you mean, Nanette,” I asked, “that you don’t want me to tell Major O’Shea?”

Nanette shook her head.

“Of course I don’t,” she replied. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it if I had meant that. What I mean is--that I am not going to do what he asks.”

“Yet he begs you to be kind,” said I, feasting my eyes on Nanette’s charming face which, now, wore an adorably wistful expression.

“I _am_ being kind,” she retorted; then: “Oh!” she exclaimed, and, suddenly silent, watched the open door.

Jack’s voice might be heard. He was returning from the telephone downstairs and had evidently admitted visitors. A moment later they came in--O’Shea and an inspector of the Special Branch whom I had met before. He was a burly man with a rat-trap jaw, and I thought it probable that he could trace an unbroken descent from the first Bow Street runner in criminal history.

Nanette greeted O’Shea with disarming nonchalance. But the only person in the room who believed that she had not expected to meet him there was Jack. The detective, a peculiarly efficient man-hunter, as events were to show, smiled grimly and stared out of the window.

O’Shea held Nanette’s hand for a moment, and then turned aside, twirling his monocle string around an extended forefinger.

“Come along, Jack!” cried Nanette gaily. “Mumsy will be tearing the Berkeley down!”

Jack was only too ready to depart. His admiration of O’Shea was something he could not hide, and, whilst he was no psychologist, this very hero worship inspired distrust--where Nanette was concerned. In other words, he was not clever enough to know that Nanette loved O’Shea, but he was modest enough to wonder how any girl could spare him an odd glance whilst O’Shea was present.

Nanette’s vivacity became feverish. She literally danced down the stairs, calling farewells to everybody. But, finally, from a long way down:

“Good-bye, Major O’Shea!” she cried.

“Good-bye, Nanette,” he said, and shook Jack’s cordially extended hand. “Look after her, Kelton. She is well worth it.”

“You’re right, sir!” Jack replied with enthusiasm--and was gone.

“Now,” said O’Shea, and fixed one of his coldest stares upon me--“are the snapshots developed?”

“Yes,” I replied, almost startled by his abrupt change of manner. “The prints came in this morning.”

“And are there any of Adolf Zara, sir?” asked the inspector.

“There is one. Unfortunately, his features are in shadow.”

“Let me see,” said O’Shea.

Once more my portfolio of snapshots was produced.

“This could be enlarged,” said the inspector eagerly. “It is quite sharp.”

“Does the face seem familiar?” O’Shea asked.

“Vaguely. I think I have seen him somewhere. But it’s very much a case of a needle in a haystack. Of course, he’s far too clever to go to any of the known centres--always supposing he’s alive, and, being alive, that he’s in London.”

“He is alive, and he is in London,” said I.

“What!” O’Shea rapped out the word in a parade-ground voice. “How the devil do you know that, Decies?”

In a very few sentences I told him.

“That settles it,” said the inspector. “The rest is routine. Find the woman and your case is won.”

O’Shea adjusted his monocle. It was a danger signal, but the Scotland Yard man was ignorant of this fact.

“Explain yourself, inspector,” he directed, with ominous calm.

“Well--it’s clear enough,” was the reply. “I shall insert a paragraph in the _Planet_, and when Mr. Zara turns up, he will be met by someone he’s not expecting.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” said O’Shea coldly. “The assistance of the Special Branch has been asked for because of the facilities that you possess in cases of this kind. But on no account must the name of any friend of mine be dragged into the matter.”

The atmosphere grew oppressively electrical for a moment; then:

“As you wish, sir,” returned the inspector. “But you are going to lose him.”

“I trust not. But even so, I decline to use this lady’s name as a bait to trap Zara.”

No doubt the man from Scotland Yard thought the speaker mad. No doubt he wondered why cases of this sort were placed in charge of distinguished soldiers handicapped by such preposterous scruples. But he did not know how Fate had intertwined Nanette in this affair so that at every turn success or failure seemed to lie cupped in her little hands. He took it like a good sportsman, however.

“Might I look over the other photographs?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said I, and spread them before him. “The negatives are in the wallet. You will want the one of Zara.”

But when, later, I found myself alone, and began to arrange my photographic gallery, I missed not one negative, but _two_. Search availed me nothing. The negative of Zara was gone, but so also was that of Nanette in the act of diving from a rock.

“Jack!” I exclaimed. “Jack must have taken it!”

But I was wrong.