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on his cup.
Michael foraged at the sideboard for Claudia, and then went to the coffee-table. I watched his face as he took the coffee-pot and milk-jug from their tray and held them poised one in each hand, over the cup. His face was perfectly inscrutable and his hands absolutely steady--but I knew there was something very wrong.
He looked up and saw me watching him.
"'Morning, bun-face," quoth he. "Sleep well?"
"Except for one unpleasant dream, Beau," I replied.
"H'm," said Michael, and I tried to analyse the sound, but found it as non-committal as his face.
He returned to his place beside Claudia, and as he seated himself, Aunt Patricia entered the room.
We rose, and I drew back her chair, and then we stood petrified in a complete silence.
One look at her face was sufficient, as she stopped half-way from the door. I knew before she spoke almost the words she was going to say.
"I have come to request that none of you--none of you--leave the house to-day," she said. "Unless, that is, one of you cares to say, even now at the eleventh hour, 'A fool and a liar I am, but a criminal I am not!' "
No one spoke or moved. I looked at Michael and he at me.
"No?" continued Lady Brandon. "Very well. But please understand that if I go out of this room without the 'Blue Water,' I will have no mercy. The thief shall pay a thief's penalty--whoever it may be."
She paused and fixed her coldly angry gaze on me, on Augustus, on Michael, on Digby, on Isobel, on Claudia.
No one spoke or moved, and for a full minute Lady Brandon waited.
"Ah!" said she at last, and then, "One other thing please note very carefully. The servants know nothing of this, and they are to know nothing. We will keep it to ourselves--as long as possible, of course--that one of you six is a treacherous, ungrateful lying thief."
And then Michael spoke:
"Say one of us four, please, Aunt Patricia."
"Thank you, Michael," she replied cuttingly. "You four are among the six. And I will apply to you when I need the help of your wisdom in choosing my words."
"I think you might say 'one of you three brothers,'" Augustus had the audacity to remark.
"Hold your miserable tongue," was Lady Brandon's discouraging reply.
"As I was saying," she continued, "the servants are to know nothing--and neither is anybody else. Until, of course, the police-court reporters have the story, and the newspapers are adorned with the portrait of one of your faces."
Once again her scornful glance swept us in turn, this time beginning with Michael and going on to Augustus.
"Very well, then," she went on. "No one leaves the house, and no one breathes a word of this to anyone but the eight people who already know of it . . ."
"Except to a detective or the police, of course," she added, with an ominous note and a disdainful edge to her voice. "The Chaplain is ill," she concluded, "and I don't wonder at it."
She turned and walked to the door. Before opening it, she faced us once again.
"Have you anything to say--Michael?" she asked.
"Leave the girls out of it--and Augustus," he replied.
"Have you anything to say, Digby?"
"No, Aunt. Awful sorry, and all that," replied Digby, and I seemed to see his lips forming the words, "No, no. Gobble and go . . . ."
"John?" and she looked even more disdainful, I thought.
"No, Aunt--except that I agree with Michael, very strongly," I answered.
"Augustus?"
"It's a damned shame . . ." blustered Augustus.
"Very helpful," Lady Brandon cut him short with cruel contempt.
"Claudia?"
"No, Aunt."
"Isobel?"
"No, Aunt," answered Isobel. "But please, please wait another day and . . ."
". . . And give the thief time to dispose of it, were you going to say?" interrupted Aunt Patricia.
She opened the door.
"Then that is all, is it?" she asked. "No one has anything to say? . . . Very well!" and she went out, closing the door quietly behind her.
§7.
"I hate skilly and loathe picking oakum, don't you, Ghastly?" remarked Digby conversationally, as we stared at each other in utter consternation.
"You foul, filthy, utter cads," spluttered Augustus, looking from Digby to me and then to Michael.
"Cuts no ice, Gus. Shut it," said Michael, in a perfectly friendly voice, and added, "Run along and play if you can't be serious. . . . Come with me, John," and turning to the girls, said, "Do me a favour, Queen Claudia and Faithful Hound."
"Of course," said Isobel.
"What is it?" asked Claudia.
"Put this wretched business out of both your minds, by means of my absolute assurance and solemn promise that it will be settled and cleared up to-day."
"How?" asked Claudia.
"Oh, Michael, dear!" said Isobel, and glanced at me.
"Never mind how, for the minute, Claudia," replied Michael. "Just believe and rest assured. Before you go to bed to-night, everything will be as clear as crystal."
"Or as blue as sapphire," said Digby, and added, "By Jove! I've got an idea! A theory! . . . My dog Joss got alarmed at the sudden darkness, jumped on a chair to avoid the crush, wagged his tail to show faith and hope, knocked over the cover, reversed his engine, and smelt round to see what he'd done, found nothing and yawned in boredom--and inhaled the 'Blue Water.'"
"Perhaps he was thirsty and drank the 'Blue Water'?" amended Isobel.
"Both very sound theories. Sounder still if Joss had been in the room," said Michael. "Come, John."
I followed my brother out into the hall. He led the way to his room.
"Take a pew, Johnny. I would hold converse with thee on certain dark matters," he said as we entered.
Having locked the door, he put his tobacco-jar on the low table beside the low arm-chair in which I was sitting.
"You leave the carbon cake too long in your pipes," he said. "That's what cracks them. Unequal expansion of the carbon and the wood, I suppose. You ought to scrape it out once a month or so."
He seated himself opposite to me and sprawled in the low chair, with his knees higher than his head.
"Oh, I like a well-caked pipe," I replied. "Nuttier and cooler."
"Ah, well! So long as you can afford to crack your pipes," he said lazily, and sat silent for a minute or two.
I was quite under his spell again, and had to keep whipping my feelings up into a state of resentment and disgust to maintain them in the condition that common justice demanded. If he were going to restore the sapphire that evening as he had hinted, why on earth couldn't he have done it just now? For the matter of that, why on earth couldn't he have returned it last night when he went to the drawing-room? Why had he ever denied taking the thing at all?
"Well, son, what about it?" he said suddenly.
"Yes, what about it, Beau?" I replied.
He looked at me quizzically.
"What's the game, should you think, Johnny?" he asked.
"That's what I want to know," I answered. "It seems a damned silly one, anyhow."
"Quite,"