Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/244

240 I believe that Oliva is safe," he said quietly. "I believe that Oliva and not any of us here will deliver van Heerden to justice."

"Are you mad?" asked Kitson in astonishment.

"I am very sane. Come here!"

He gripped the old lawyer by the arm and led him back to the girl's room.

"Look," he said, and pointed.

"What do you mean, the bookshelf?"

Beale nodded.

"Half an hour ago I gave Oliva a book," he said, "that book is no longer there."

"But in the name of Heaven how can a book save her?" demanded the exasperated Kitson.

Stanford Beale did not answer.

"Yes, yes, she's safe. I know she's safe," he said. "If Oliva is the girl I think she is then I see van Heerden's finish."

HE church bells were chiming eleven o'clock when a car drew up before a gloomy corner shop, bearing the dingy sign of the pawnbroker's calling, and Beale and McNorton alighted.

It was a main street and was almost deserted. Beale looked up at the windows. They were dark. He knocked at the side-entrance of the shop, and presently the two men were joined by a policeman.

"Nobody lives here, sir," explained the officer, when McNorton had made himself known. "Old Rosenblaum runs the business, and lives at Highgate."

He flashed his lamp upon the door and tried it, but it did not yield. A nightfarer who had been in the shade