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Updated: June 19, 2025
It was half past five when I reached the station. A sleepy porter informed me that there would be a train to London, a slow train, at six. I remained in London two days, and on the third went down to Sanstead to see Audrey for the last time. I had made my decision. I found her on the drive, close by the gate.
It was a scream, a shrill, piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at its maximum and held the note; a squeal which could only proceed from one throat: the deafening war-cry of the Little Nugget. I had grown accustomed, since my arrival at Sanstead House, to a certain quickening of the pace of life, but tonight events succeeded one another with a rapidity which surprised me.
He is 'taking duty'. And 'taking duty' is a thing to be remembered, especially by a man who, like myself, has lived a life of fatted ease, protected from all the minor annoyances of life by a substantial income. Sanstead House educated me. It startled me. It showed me a hundred ways in which I had allowed myself to become soft and inefficient, without being aware of it.
And then, very quietly, somebody entered the room. There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping de luxe.
It seemed incredible that such peculiarly Wild Western events could happen in peaceful England, even in so isolated a spot as Sanstead House. It had been one of those interminable days which occur only at schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent on the weather.
My strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I saw my way to achieving. To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too implicitly on the mesmeric pistol.
I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at Sanstead House School in other words, of every male adult in the house except Mr Fisher himself to assemble in Mr Abney's study after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony, like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school, where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.
He would, of course, have made it his business to get early information of Mr Ford's movements. It would be easy for him to discover that the millionaire had been called away to the north and that the Nugget was still an inmate of Sanstead House. And here he was preparing for the grand attack. I had been premature in removing Buck's name from the list of active combatants. Broken legs mend.
'If you wanted a halfpenny to make up twopence to buy a lizard, what would you do, sir? He got it. Ogden Ford, the El Dorado of the kidnapping industry, entered Sanstead House at a quarter past nine that evening. He was preceded by a Worried Look, Mr Arnold Abney, a cabman bearing a large box, and the odd-job man carrying two suitcases.
With a watchful Pinkerton's man within, and a vengeful gang of rivals without, Sanstead House seemed likely to become an unrestful place for a young kidnapper with no previous experience. The need for swift action had become imperative.
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