“In fact, at about two in the morning, Hilden came around to my rooms with the Premier. They roused me from sleep and taxed me with the theft, Lord Penshurst threatening that if I did not give them up he would certainly not accede to the other terms which I am asking of him.
“I told him quite frankly that I did not take them but that I strongly suspected you.”
In his sudden rage he would have seized Melun by the throat; but Melun, whom Westerham had never seen more calm and self-possessed, pushed his hand aside and said, “Softly, softly! you had better hear me out.”
“I told them,” continued Melun, “that it would be folly to rouse you as they had aroused me. In fact, I told them that you were a strong man armed—that any attack made on you or your rooms in the small hours would inevitably lead to one of them being damaged, which would only result in awkward police-court proceedings and painful revelations.”
“You scoundrel! You scoundrel!” cried Westerham again.
“Wait a minute, my dear fellow; hear me out,” pleaded Melun. “You may consider that you have played the game with me, but that is not my own view of things. It was necessary to teach you a lesson. In your nice, strong, masterful way you were under the impression that you had to deal with a pack of cowards and curs.”
“Perhaps; but one of them is not quite so impotent as you judged him, and if you reflect a moment you will see, at any rate, that you are at present in a rather awkward predicament. However, to get on with my tale.
“I had you watched this morning, and as soon as you left your rooms I slipped in here with the diamonds.”
“But you said you had not taken them,” said Westerham.
“So I did, but I took them none the less. I got rid of your man for a minute on some pretext, and just jammed them into the pocket of the coat you had worn the night before. Then I at once communicated with Downing Street. I could not tell them where the diamonds actually were, for that would have given me away, but I knew that Lord Penshurst and Hilden were sufficiently desperate to turn your place upside down to find them. They did find them, for Hilden telephoned the fact to me half an hour before you sent for me.”
“Good Lord!” said Westerham, and held up his hand for silence. He wished to think. Matters were becoming more and more difficult to understand. Lord Penshurst went in dread of Melun—so great a dread that he even had to confide in his nephew and his private secretary when Melun pressed him too hard. It was evident, too, that Melun's grip of the Premier must be of the most remorseless kind, or such a man as Lord Penshurst would never stoop to countenance such deeds on Melun's part.