65 A Heart Is Stolen by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online

Marquis helped himself to a brandy and passed the decanter to his friend.
    “Did you ever see anything so cool?” Anthony asked.
    “This has been planned for a long time,” the Marquis observed.
    “Why should you think that?”
    “Do you realise neither of the two men who were collecting the spoils hesitated? They knew exactly what to do and waited only for the word of command.”
    “How the hell did they know we were here?” Anthony enquired. “After all, we only arrived unexpectedly this evening, unless they were intending to come anyway.”
    “It’s a possibility,” the Marquis said. “At the same time, in that case why tonight?”
    He looked at the space on the table where the gold ship had stood and said,
    “I wonder what else they have taken.”
    “We must go and look,” Anthony replied. “In the meantime I need plenty of this brandy to sustain me. I am not used to highwaymen walking in when I am having dinner.”
    “They were certainly different from any highwaymen I have seen before,” the Marquis said. “Why the hoods? Usually a mask or a handkerchief up to the eyes is sufficient.”
    “Yes, that is true,” Anthony agreed. “Do you remember that one who held us up on Hampstead Common? You shot him in the leg. I can still hear his screams as he galloped away.”
    “I hardly expected I should have to be armed in my own dining room,” the Marquis said savagely.
    “I have never heard of this happening to anyone else,” Anthony remarked.
    “It’s not the sort of thing that ought to be happening at Heathcliffe and, if there are men like them terrorising the neighbourhood, then Markham should have warned us.”
    “I cannot believe that he would expect such an outrage to happen the first night we arrive,” Anthony said.
    He put his hand up to where his cravat pin had been and said angrily,
    “I wish I had not broken my rule of never wearing jewellery. To tell the truth, I tied my own cravat and tied it so badly as I was tired that I required a pin to keep it in place.”
    “The one thing I mind their taking,” the Marquis said, “is my father’s watch and my fob.”
    “We don’t know what else they have taken.”
    The Marquis made a sound that was almost a cry.
    “I bet it was the snuffboxes,” he said. “I was looking at them before dinner and I thought that they were too valuable to leave lying about. I can only pray they did not get the ones in the safe.”
    As he spoke, he remembered the third man who had come through the door that led towards the kitchen.
    He jumped up and walked across the room, opened the door that the highwayman had shut behind him and went into the pantry that adjoined the dining room.
    One look was enough to tell him his worst fears had been realised.
    The door of the huge safe that almost covered one wall in the pantry was open.
    It was something he knew always happened when a dinner was in progress, the gold and silver ornaments had to be taken from the safe and placed on the table, then returned to it when dinner was over.
    It would be too much to expect the servants to lock the safe for the short time that the meal was in progress.
    The Marquis pulled the safe door wide seeing, as he spoke, inside it on the narrow shelves that there were still a great number of items, teapots, coffee jugs, gold candelabra which were used at big banquets, huge piles of silver plate that were kept for special dinners.
    It was impossible to know whether the snuffboxes had been there or not and he was aware that only Markham would be able to ascertain exactly what was missing.
    Still extremely angry because he felt so helpless, the Marquis without speaking walked from the pantry and along the passage that led to the hall.
    There, followed by Anthony, he went into the library.
    Although it was dusk there were no candles lit in this room, but it was quite easy to see in the faint light that came from the windows that the top of the glass cabinet was open.
    The Marquis went