The Pawns Count Part 8

"On the whole," she said, "I am quite glad that I telephoned to you."

"You showed a sound discretion," he admitted.

"If he had not been lame," she confessed, "I should have sent to Captain Holderness."

"That would have been a great mistake," Lutchester a.s.sured her.

"Holderness is a good fellow but devoid of imagination. He is great on const.i.tuted authority. He would have probably marched up with a squad of heavy-footed policemen--and found nothing."

"Yet I must confess," Pamela persisted, with a frankness unaccountable even to herself, "that if I could have thought of any one else I should never have telephoned to you."

"And why not?"

"Because I should not have cla.s.sified you as being of the adventurous type," she declared.

Lutchester looked injured.

"After all," he protested, "that is not my fault. That is due to your singular lack of perception. However, I am able to return the compliment. I, for my part, should have thought that you were more interested in the fashions than in paying exceedingly rash visits to degenerate orientals and negroes."

"Perhaps some day," she remarked, "we may understand one another better."

He met her gaze with a certain seriousness.

"I hope that we may," he said.

For some reason they were both silent for a moment. Her tone had changed a little when she spoke again.

"You are sure," she asked, "that you do not mind my leaving the rest of this affair in your hands? There are reasons, which I cannot tell you of just now, which make me anxious not to appear in it at all."

"I accept the charge as a privilege," he a.s.sented. "We are within a few yards of my rooms now. I promise you that I will look after Captain Graham and advise him as to the proper course for him to pursue."

The car came to a standstill.

"This then," she said, holding out her hand, "will be good-by for the present."

He held her fingers for a moment without reply. Quite suddenly she decided that she liked him. Then he lifted Graham, who was half asleep, half unconscious, to his feet, and a.s.sisted him from the car.

"Where shall I tell the man to go to?" he inquired.

"He knows," she answered with sudden taciturnity.

"Wherever it may be, then," he replied, "bon voyage!"

CHAPTER VI

It was about half-an-hour later when Sandy Graham opened his eyes and began to feel the life once more warm in his veins. He was seated in the most comfortable easy-chair of John Lutchester's bachelor sitting-room. By his side was a coffee equipage and a decanter of brandy. His head still throbbed, and his bones ached, but his mind was beginning to grow clearer. Lutchester, who had been seated at the writing table, swung round in his chair at the sound of his guest's movement.

"Feeling better, eh?" he asked.

"I am all right now," was the somewhat shaky reply. "Got a head like a turnip and a tongue like a lime-kiln, but I'm beginning--to feel myself."

"How's your memory?"

"Hazy. Let me see.... My G.o.d, I've been robbed, haven't I!"

"So I imagine," Lutchester replied. "You rather asked for it, didn't you?"

Graham moved uneasily in his place. He had suddenly the feeling of being back at school--and in the presence of the headmaster.

"I suppose I did in a way," he admitted, "but at Henry's--why, I've always looked upon the place as a club more than anything else."

"I am afraid that I can't agree with you there," Lutchester observed.

"I should consider Henry's a remarkably cosmopolitan restaurant, where a man in your position should exercise more than even ordinary restraint."

"I suppose I was wrong," Graham muttered, "but I had been working for about ten hours on end, and then rushed up to London in the car to try and keep my appointment with Holderness."

"Stop anywhere on the way?"

"We had a few drinks," Graham confessed. "I was so done up. Perhaps I had more than I meant to. However, it's no use bothering about that now. I've been robbed, and that's all there is about it. Could we get on to Scotland Yard from here?"

"We could, but I don't think we will," Lutchester replied.

Graham was puzzled.

"Why not?" he demanded. "That formula was the most wonderful thing that has ever been put together, and the whole thing's so simple. I've been afraid every second that some one else might stumble upon it."

"It is without doubt a great loss," Lutchester admitted. "All the same, I don't fancy that it's a Scotland Yard business exactly. Have you any idea who robbed you?"

Graham paused to think. His eyes were still troubled and uncertain.

"It's coming back to me," he muttered. "I remember that beastly barn of a chapel. There were Jules, and that musician fellow, and the big American. He emptied my pockets ... Why, of course, I remember how angry he was ... My pocketbook was gone! They left me alone to write out the formula again, and then you came.... How on earth did you tumble on to my being there, Lutchester?"

"It was Miss Pamela Van Teyl whom you must thank," Lutchester told him, "not me. It seems she knew more about Henry's than any of us. She'd come up against some of the crew in Berlin, and she guessed they were holding you for that formula. She got the key out of one of those men and then telephoned to me for my help."

"And I never even thanked her," Graham murmured weakly.

There was a moment's silence. The recovering man's consciousness of his position and of events was evidently as yet incomplete. He sat up suddenly in his chair, gripping the sides of it. His eyes were large with reminiscent trouble.

"My pocketbook had gone when they searched me," he muttered.

"Are you sure that you had it with you when you came into Henry's?"

Lutchester inquired.

"Absolutely certain."