'If he comes back he would see the light, and be frightened away,'
said Nella. 'That wouldn't do at all.'
'It wouldn't, Miss Racksole,' said Babylon, and there was in his
voice a note of admiration for the girl's sagacity which Racksole
heard with high paternal pride.
'Listen, Nella,' said the latter, drawing his daughter to him in the
profound gloom of the cellar. 'We fancy that Jules may be trying to
tamper with a certain bottle of wine - a bottle which might
possibly be drunk by Prince Eugen. Now do you think that the man
you saw might have been Jules?'
'I hadn't previously thought of him as being Jules, but immediately
you mentioned the name I somehow knew that he was. Yes, I am
sure it was Jules.'
'Well, just hear what I have to say. There is no time to lose. If he
is coming at all he will be here very soon - and you can help.'
Racksole explained what he thought Jules' tactics might be. He
proposed that if the man returned he should not be interfered with,
but merely watched from the other side of the glass door.
'You want, as it were, to catch Mr Jules alive?' said Babylon, who
seemed rather taken aback at this novel method of dealing with
criminals. 'Surely,'
he added, 'it would be simpler and easier to inform the police of
your suspicion, and to leave everything to them.'
'My dear fellow,' said Racksole, 'we have already gone much too
far without the police to make it advisable for us to call them in at
this somewhat advanced stage of the proceedings.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225