Jimmy's first emotion on hearing the footstep was the crudeinstinct of self-preservation. All that he was able to think ofat the moment was the fact that he was in a questionable positionand one which would require a good deal of explaining away if hewere found, and his only sensation was a strong desire to avoiddiscovery. He made a silent, scrambling leap for the gallerystairs, and reached their shelter just as the door opened. Hestood there, rigid, waiting to be challenged, but apparently hehad moved in time, for no voice spoke. The door closed so gentlyas to be almost inaudible, and then there was silence again. Theroom remained in darkness, and it was this perhaps that firstsuggested to Jimmy the comforting thought that the intruder wasequally desirous of avoiding the scrutiny of his fellows. He hadtaken it for granted in his first panic that he himself was theonly person in that room whose motive for being there would nothave borne inspection. But now, safely hidden in the gallery, outof sight from the floor below, he had the leisure to consider thenewcomer's movements and to draw conclusions from them.
An honest man's first act would surely have been to switch on thelights. And an honest man would hardly have crept so stealthily.
It became apparent to Jimmy, as he leaned over the rail and triedto pierce the darkness, that there was sinister work afoot; andhe had hardly reached this conclusion when his mind took afurther leap and he guessed the identity of the soft-footedperson below. It could be none but his old friend Lord Wisbeach,known to "the boys" as Gentleman Jack. It surprised him that hehad not thought of this before. Then it surprised him that, afterthe talk they had only a few hours earlier in that very room,Gentleman Jack should have dared to risk this raid.
At this moment the blackness was relieved as if by the strikingof a match. The man below had brought an electric torch intoplay, and now Jimmy could see clearly. He had been right in hissurmise. It was Lord Wisbeach. He was kneeling in front of thesafe. What he was doing to the safe, Jimmy could not see, for theman's body was in the way; but the electric torch shone on hisface, lighting up grim, serious features quite unlike the amiableand slightly vacant mask which his lordship was wont to presentto the world. As Jimmy looked, something happened in the pool oflight beyond his vision. Gentleman Jack gave a mutteredexclamation of satisfaction, and then Jimmy saw that the door ofthe safe had swung open. The air was full of a penetrating smellof scorched metal. Jimmy was not an expert in these matters, buthe had read from time to time of modern burglars and theirmethods, and he gathered that an oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, withits flame that cuts steel as a knife cuts cheese, had been atwork.
Lord Wisbeach flashed the torch into the open safe, plunged hishand in, and drew it out again, holding something. Handling thisin a cautious and gingerly manner, he placed it carefully in hisbreast pocket. Then he straightened himself. He switched off thetorch, and moved to the window, leaving the rest of hisimplements by the open safe. He unfastened the shutter, thenraised the catch of the window. At this point it seemed to Jimmythat the time had come to interfere.
"Tut, tut!" he said in a tone of mild reproof.
The effect of the rebuke on Lord Wisbeach was remarkable. Hejumped convulsively away from the window, then, revolving on hisown axis, flashed the torch into every corner of the room.
"Who's that?" he gasped.
"Conscience!" said Jimmy.
Lord Wisbeach had overlooked the gallery in his researches. Henow turned his torch upwards. The light flooded the gallery onthe opposite side of the room from where Jimmy stood. There was apistol in Gentleman Jack's hand now. It followed the torchuncertainly.
Jimmy, lying flat on the gallery floor, spoke again.
"Throw that gun away, and the torch, too," he said. "I've got youcovered!"The torch flashed above his head, but the raised edge of thegallery rail protected him.
"I'll give you five seconds. If you haven't dropped that gun bythen, I shall shoot!"As he began to count, Jimmy heartily regretted that he hadallowed his appreciation of the dramatic to lead him into thissituation. It would have been so simple to have roused the housein a prosaic way and avoided this delicate position. Suppose hisbluff did not succeed. Suppose the other still clung to hispistol at the end of the five seconds. He wished that he had madeit ten instead. Gentleman Jack was an enterprising person, as hisprevious acts had showed. He might very well decide to take achance. He might even refuse to believe that Jimmy was armed. Hehad only Jimmy's word for it. Perhaps he might be as deficient insimple faith as he had proved to be in Norman blood! Jimmylingered lovingly over his count.
"Four!" he said reluctantly.
There was a breathless moment. Then, to Jimmy's unspeakablerelief, gun and torch dropped simultaneously to the floor. In aninstant Jimmy was himself again.
"Go and stand with your face to that wall," he said crisply.
"Hold your hands up!""Why?""I'm going to see how many more guns you've got.""I haven't another.""I'd like to make sure of that for myself. Get moving!"Gentleman Jack reluctantly obeyed. When he had reached the wall,Jimmy came down. He switched on the lights. He felt in theother's pockets, and almost at once encountered something hardand metallic.
He shook his head reproachfully.
"You are very loose and inaccurate in your statements," he said.
"Why all these weapons? I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
Now you can turn around and put your hands down."Gentleman Jack's appeared to be a philosophical nature. Thechagrin consequent upon his failure seemed to have left him. Hesat on the arm of a chair and regarded Jimmy without apparenthostility. He even smiled a faint smile.
"I thought I had fixed you, he said. You must have been smarterthan I took you for. I never supposed you would get on to thatdrink and pass it up."Understanding of an incident which had perplexed him came toJimmy.
"Was it you who put that high-ball in my room? Was it doped?""Didn't you know?""Well," said Jimmy, "I never knew before that virtue got itsreward so darned quick in this world. I rejected that high-ballnot because I suspected it but out of pure goodness, because Ihad made up my mind that I was through with all that sort ofthing."His companion laughed. If Jimmy had had a more intimateacquaintance with the resourceful individual whom the "boys"called Gentleman Jack, he would have been disquieted by thatlaugh. It was an axiom among those who knew him well, that whenGentleman Jack chuckled in the reflective way, he generally hadsomething unpleasant up his sleeve.
"It's your lucky night," said Gentleman Jack.
"It looks like it.""Well, it isn't over yet.""Very nearly. You had better go and put that test-tube back inwhat is left of the safe now. Did you think I had forgotten it?""What test-tube?""Come, come, old friend! The one filled with Partridge'sexplosive, which you have in your breast-pocket."Gentleman Jack laughed again. Then he moved towards the safe.
"Place it gently on the top shelf," said Jimmy.
The next moment every nerve in his body was leaping andquivering. A great shout split the air. Gentleman Jack,apparently insane, was giving tongue at the top of his voice.
"Help! Help! Help!"The conversation having been conducted up to this point inundertones, the effect of this unexpected uproar was like anexplosion. The cries seemed to echo round the room and shake thevery walls. For a moment Jimmy stood paralysed, staring feebly;then there was a sudden deafening increase in the din. Somethingliving seemed to writhe and jump in his hand. He dropped itincontinently, and found himself gazing in a stupefied way at around, smoking hole in the carpet. Such had been the effect ofGentleman Jack's unforeseen outburst that he had quite forgottenthat he held the revolver, and he had been unfortunate enough atthis juncture to pull the trigger.
There was a sudden rush and a swirl of action. Something hitJimmy under the chin. He staggered back, and when he hadrecovered himself found himself looking into the muzzle of therevolver which had nearly blown a hole in his foot a moment back.
The sardonic face of Gentleman Jack smiled grimly over thebarrel.
"I told you the night wasn't over yet!" he said.
The blow under the chin had temporarily dulled Jimmy's mentality.
He stood, swallowing and endeavouring to pull himself togetherand to get rid of a feeling that his head was about to come off.
He backed to the desk and steadied himself against it.
As he did so, a voice from behind him spoke.
"Whassall this?"He turned his head. A curious procession was filing in throughthe open French window. First came Mr. Crocker, still wearing hishideous mask; then a heavily bearded individual with roundspectacles, who looked like an automobile coming through ahaystack; then Ogden Ford, and finally a sturdy,determined-looking woman with glittering but poorly co-ordinatedeyes, who held a large revolver in her unshaking right hand andlooked the very embodiment of the modern female who will stand nononsense. It was part of the nightmare-like atmosphere whichseemed to brood inexorably over this particular night that thisperson looked to Jimmy exactly like the parlour-maid who had cometo him in this room in answer to the bell and who had sent hisfather to him. Yet how could it be she? Jimmy knew little of thehabits of parlour-maids, but surely they did not wander aboutwith revolvers in the small hours?
While he endeavoured feverishly to find reason in this chaos, thedoor opened and a motley crowd, roused from sleep by the cries,poured in. Jimmy, turning his head back again to attend to thisinvasion, perceived Mrs. Pett, Ann, two or three of the geniuses,and Willie Partridge, in various stages of _negligee_ and babblingquestions.
The woman with the pistol, assuming instant and unquestioneddomination of the assembly, snapped out an order.
"Shutatdoor!"Somebody shut the door.
"Now, whassall this?" she said, turning to Gentleman Jack.
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