He heard her deliberate steps cross the marble hall and the front door shut. He heard Marie go into her mistress's room. Like a shadow he stepped into the drawing-room, of which the door stood open. From an oriel window he looked down at the car waiting below. There was a man sitting in one of the front chairs and a handsome, painted, plump woman on the back seat, dressed in the very height of fashion. Pointer eyed her keenly through his glass from a discreet position behind the curtains. Her black eyes were fastened on the front door. These were evidently the Clarks, and even after Mrs. Erskine had taken her seat he kept his glass leveled until the car turned up the drive and purred out of sight.
He slipped back into the little room where the trunk still stood, and when the maid looked in, after tidying the bedroom next door, she found him apparently hard at work. He glanced up cheerily, to meet a very gloomy stare.
"It's going to be a long job, eh, monsieur?"
"Looks like it. By the way, I forgot to say something to madame. At what hour does she return?"
"Only just in time to dress for dinner. There is a great charity bazaar on at the Castle at which madame has promised to help. She gave us all tickets for the grounds."
"Were you going, too? I heard that there were to be all sorts of amusements."
"I was going, but, if you wish it, I can stay...?"
Hope shone in her face again. Perhaps the jaunt would yet come off.
"No! no!" protested Pointer in genuine horror. "I may be here for hours."
A bank note was slipped into her hand. "Go and enjoy yourself, ma fille, and drink my health at lunch."
Marie was in the seventh heaven, what with the chance to get off for the day after all, the twenty francs, and the compliment to her thirty years. Within a quarter of an hour a voiture, with Marie, her husband, the chef and Mrs. Clark's maid, drove off briskly; for, as Marie said, in what better hands could the villa be left than in that of a gentleman connected with madame's solicitors?
Pointer bolted the doors, and then walked rapidly through the house from cellar to attic. Major Vaughan and his man were away at Monte Carlo, the maid had told him, and he had it all to himself. He took his coat off, and after his rapid general survey examined the rooms in detail. Finally he came to Mrs. Erskine's bedroom. The walls were of grey silk, with here and there grey velvet medallions. After a little measuring he made for the panel beside the window. As on all the others, oxidized metal traceries ornamented the oval. He pressed an ornament which looked the shiniest to his keen eyes. A very few experiments taught him the trick, and the panel swung open on its hinges. At the same time three gongs clanged in muffled fury. Pointer had spent some of his minutes, as he went over the house, to good effect in stuffing sofa cushions around all electric alarums, or the din would have been terrible. The telephone bell beside the bed rang insistently.
"'Elio! 'Elio!" he called in answer; "yes, it is I, Guillaume, and not a burglar. It was as well I had that little chat with you this morning, eh?" and he hung up the receiver. Then he turned back to the safe. A few minutes went by before even his skilled eyes found the right knob which should have been turned first to silence the alarums. The safe had been bought off a firm which had spared no expense in its installation evidently. It was the only one on the premises, and he hoped to find some interesting things in it. He looked at the safe sitting like a shrine deep in its little niche with great respect. "So it's an Aglae. Humph!"
The Aglae safes, turned out very sparingly by Creusot, are the last word in their line. He knew them well. There was one in the Commissioner's office at the Yard. They are pretty to look at. No cumbersome, easily detected combination lock here. A little slit, looking as innocent as a slot-machine, faced him, but any key, whether of another Aglae or not, which was not the right one would set a powerful alarum ringing against the light metal of the outer door which no cushion could deaden, and it would ring until the right key was inserted, if need be for thirty-five days. If a burglar, caring nothing for keys, tried his usual tactics of cutting, he would find an outer case which let itself be opened with ease, and out would stream a volume of gas calculated to render anyone unconscious who stood near it, even though the windows were open. Some Aglae had an alternative plan by which a revolver emptied its six cartridges in the direction where the first cut was made. Altogether, a slight acquaintance with an Aglae was distinctly advisable for any up-to-date cracksman if he wanted a chance to show his talents elsewhere.
Pointer whistled softly. There was only one man in Europe who could help him. In Barcelona, at the foot of Tibidabo, lives a Catalan, a Senor Foch, who works in a simple little shop with his son for the police of seven countries; and lucky it was for the police that honesty had been the motto of the two men, for there is nothing that can be done to lock or key that they cannot do. Only a Foch could copy the key of this safe, supposing Pointer could lay his hands on it for a moment. The Catalans worked only on their own terms. Measurements, weight, and impressions had to be taken, according to their strict rules, or they would refuse the job.
He replaced everything as he had found it, took off the silencers from the various alarums, and proceeded with his room to room inspection. In Major Vaughan's flat he found some things which interested him greatly. He even went so far as to take a tracing of some boots and shoes he found up there, and very familiar the outline would have looked to Watts, too, had he seen it.
It was close on six o'clock when he finished, and the only results to the eye for a very fatiguing day was a little cardboard box of a kind which had contained stationery, a tiny oval box retrieved from a dusty corner of the attic, and a little yellow pill-box, marked "Mrs. Erskine, 14 Ave. de Paris, Biarritz," that had come from a deep pocket of an old travelling bag. Yet with these, and his tracings, and his other discoveries, the Chief Inspector felt more than satisfied.
Next morning he took his leave of Mrs. Erskine, and acknowledged that she had been right in thinking that the papers which he had looked over contained no clue.
"I'm quite sure that the criminal is that man you let go, Carter!"
He did not contradict her. "He's where we can put Our hands on him at any moment," he assured her as he bowed himself out. He had timed his departure to coincide with the hour at which he had learned from Marie that the major and his man were expected to arrive from Monte Carlo. The major would sometimes go regularly to the Casino for a week at a time, or, as now, just for an occasional flutter; on the other hand, months might go by without his trying his luck at the tables, where he generally won. And indeed a week might pass without his leaving his flat at all. He had been gassed in the war, Marie informed Pointer, prompted by his easy questions, "and was now un original—un sauvage, yet often still of a charm!"
The major returned in a dusty motor while Pointer still lingered over some flowers behind a bush of heliotrope. The valet whipped open the door. The major, a shrunken little man, stood blinking irritably into the sunlight with red-rimmed eyes. He caught sight of the Clarks just leaving in their tennis clothes.
"You look like solid ghosts," he grunted in reply to their greetings.
"Won pots of money, you lucky man?" asked the lady.
"Oh, pots and pans!" he nodded. "As you say, I am a lucky devil. Know the difference between a lucky devil and an unlucky one, Clark. You ought, by Gad, but do you?"
Mr. Clark, a sunburnt, good-natured