Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/234

230 the code—but I am afraid that I cannot do that until after ten o'clock.'"

McNorton was scribbling notes in shorthand and carefully circled the hour.

"We went back to his flat and had breakfast together—it was then about five o'clock. He packed a few things and I particularly noticed that he looked very carefully at the interior of a little grip which he had brought the previous night from Staines. He was so furtive, carrying the bag to the light of the window, that I supposed he was consulting his code, and I wondered why he should defer giving me the information until ten o'clock. Anyway, I could swear he took something from the bag and slipped it into his pocket. We left the flat soon after and drove to a railway station where the baggage was left. Van Heerden had given me bank-notes for a thousand pounds in case we should be separated, and I went on to the house in South London. You needn't ask me where it is because van Heerden is not there."

He gulped again at the wine.

"At eleven o'clock van Heerden came back," resumed Milsom, "and if ever a man was panic-stricken it was he—the long and the short of it is that the code was mislaid."

"Mislaid!" Beale was staggered.

Here was farce interpolated into tragedy—the most grotesque, the most unbelievable farce.

"Mislaid," said Milsom. "He did not say as much, but I gathered from the few disjointed words he flung at me that the code was not irredeemably lost; in fact, I have reason to believe that he knows where it is. It was after that that van Heerden started in to do some tall cursing of me, my country, my decadent race and the like. Things have been strained all the afternoon. To-night they reached a climax. He wanted me to help him in a burglary—and burglary is not my forte."

"What did he want to burgle?" asked McNorton, with professional interest.

"Ah! There you have me! It was the question I asked and he refused to answer. I was to put myself in his hands and there was to be some shooting if, as he