Chapter IX. The Need of Knowledge - Page 2

beg your pardon, old fellow, for my rudeness. I quite lost my temper at the suggestion that I do not know these lamps. You don't mind, do you?' The Detective answered heartily:

'Lord, sir, not I. I like to see folks angry when I am dealing with them, whether they are on my side or the other. It is when people are angry that you learn the truth from them. I keep cool; that is my trade! Do you know, you have told me more about those lamps in the past two minutes than when you filled me up with details of how to identify them.'

Mr. Corbeck grunted; he was not pleased at having given himself away. All at once he turned to me and said in his natural way:

'Now tell me how you got them back?' I was so surprised that I said without thinking:

We didn't get them back!' The traveller laughed openly.

"What on earth do you mean?' he asked. 'You didn't get them back! Why, there they are before your eyes! We found you looking at them when we came in.' By this time I had recovered my surprise and had my wits about me.

'Why, that's just it,' I said, 'We had only come across them, by accident, that very moment!'

Mr. Corbeck drew back and looked hard at Miss Trelawny and myself; turning his eyes from one to the other as he asked:

'Do you mean to tell me that no one brought them here; that you found them in that drawer? That, so to speak, no one at all brought them back?'

'I suppose someone must have brought them here; they couldn't have come of their own accord. But who it was, or when, or how, neither of us knows. We shall have to make enquiry, and see if any of the servants know anything of it.'

We all stood silent for several seconds. It seemed a long time. The first to speak was the Detective, who said in an unconscious way:

'Well, I'm damned! I beg your pardon, miss!' Then his mouth shut like a steel trap.

We called up the servants, one by one, and asked them if they knew anything of some articles placed in a drawer in the. boudoir; but none of them could throw any light on the circumstances. We did not tell them what the articles were; or let them see them.

Mr. Corbeck packed the lamps in cotton wool, and placed them in a tin box. This, I may mention incidentally, was then brought up to the detectives' room, where one of the men stood guard over them with a revolver the whole night. Next day we got a small safe into the house, and placed them in it. There were two different keys. One of them I kept myself; the other I placed in my drawer in the Safe Deposit vault. We were all determined that the lamps should not be lost again.

About an hour after we had found the lamps, Doctor Winchester arrived. He had a large parcel: with him, which, when unwrapped, proved to be the mummy of a cat. With Miss Trelawny's permission he placed this in the boudoir; and Silvio was brought close to it. To the surprise of