The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [680]
"Look here," cried the impetuous Tommy Hunter, "I haven't got any bumps; but you'll jolly well have some soon, you----"
Hardcastle mildly restrained him as he plunged back through the door; and for the moment all the group had turned again and were looking back into the inner room.
It was at that moment that the thing happened. It was the impetuous Tommy, once more, who was the first to move, and this time to better effect. Before anyone else had seen anything, when Hardcastle had barely remembered with a jump that he had left the gem on the stone sill, Tommy was across the cloister with the leap of a cat and, leaning with his head and shoulders out of the aperture between two columns, had cried out in a voice that rang down all the arches: "I've got him!"
In that instant of time, just after they turned, and just before they heard his triumphant cry, they had all seen it happen. Round the corner of one of the two columns, there had darted in and out again a brown or rather bronze-coloured hand, the colour of dead gold; such as they had seen elsewhere. The hand had struck as straight as a striking snake; as instantaneous as the flick of the long tongue of an ant-eater. But it had licked up the jewel. The stone slab of the window-sill shone bare in the pale and fading light.
"I've got him," gasped Tommy Hunter; "but he's wriggling pretty hard. You fellows run round him in front--he can't have got rid of it, anyhow."
The others obeyed, some racing down the corridor and some leaping over the low wall, with the result that a little crowd, consisting of Hardcastle, Lord Mounteagle, Father Brown, and even the undetachable Mr. Phroso of the bumps, had soon surrounded the captive Master of the Mountain, whom Hunter was hanging on to desperately by the collar with one hand, and shaking every now and then in a manner highly insensible to the dignity of Prophets as a class.
"Now we've got him, anyhow," said Hunter, letting go with a sigh. "We've only got to search him. The thing must be here."
Three-quarters of an hour later. Hunter and Hardcastle, their top- hats, ties, gloves, slips and spats somewhat the worse for their recent activities, came face to face in the cloister and gazed at each other.
"Well," asked Hardcastle with restraint, "have you any views on the mystery?"
"Hang it all," replied Hunter; "you can't call it a mystery. Why, we all saw him take it ourselves."
"Yes," replied the other, "but we didn't all see him lose it ourselves. And the mystery is, where has he lost it so that we can't find it?"
"It must be somewhere," said Hunter. "Have you searched the fountain and all round that rotten old god there?"
"I haven't dissected the little fishes," said Hardcastle, lifting his eyeglass and surveying the other. "Are you thinking of the ring of Polycrates?"
Apparently the survey, through the eye-glass, of the round face before him, convinced him that it covered no such meditation on Greek legend.
"It's not on him, I admit," repeated Hunter, suddenly, "unless he's swallowed it."
"Are we to dissect the Prophet, too?" asked the other smiling. "But here comes our host."
"This is a most distressing matter," said Lord Mounteagle, twisting his white moustache with a nervous and even tremulous hand. "Horrible thing to have a theft in one's house, let alone connecting it with a man like the Master. But, I confess, I can't quite make head or tail of the way in which he is talking about it. I wish you'd come inside and see what you think."
They went in together, Hunter falling behind and dropping into conversation with Father Brown, who was kicking his heels round the cloister.
"You must be very strong," said the priest pleasantly. "You held him with one hand; and he seemed pretty vigorous, even when we had eight hands to hold him, like one of those Indian gods."
They took a turn or two round the cloister,