Dangerous Dalliance by Joan Smith

but he didn’t take a thing. I’ve checked it all out. Not so much as a teaspoon is gone, thank the Lord.”
    Of course, it was not teaspoons he was after, but information. It was not likely the message Papa had been carrying was here. Perhaps he was after the schedule of messages expected, or some notes regarding messages to be sent.
    Mrs. Lovatt rushed out with Mrs. Gibbons to examine the east door. Bunny remained behind with me. It was my first chance for a private word with him, and I told him about the note I had written to Depew, and my fear for the excess of doors at Gracefield.
    “We can bar the doors at night,” he said. “Ram a chair under the knob. I’ll sleep downstairs. I’ll hear if anyone jiggles them aside and gets in.”
    “Do you have a gun, Bunny?”
    “I have my shooting guns at home.”
    “Papa has a pistol in the bottom drawer of his desk. I’ll get it for you.” I went to the desk and drew open the drawer. The gun was gone. I don’t know whether it was fear or anger that caused the rush of blood to my head. I must stay calm. Perhaps Mrs. Gibbons had taken the gun after the break-in.
    “It’s gone,” I told Bunny, and rushed off after Mrs. Gibbons to inquire for the pistol.
    “What pistol?” she asked, horrified. “I had no idea your father kept a pistol in his office. Whatever did he do that for?”
    She was still jabbering when I returned to the study, and Bunny. “I think we know now what the break-in was all about,” I said.
    “How would the fellow who got in know the gun was there?”
    “He wouldn’t, but Snoad knew this office like the back of his hand.”
    “Then he could have just lifted it and kept mum.”
    “He knew I spent time here. He needed some explanation if I should discover the pistol was missing. So he made a stage play of someone having broken in, and just took the gun himself.” I kept my main concern to myself. What did Snoad want with a gun, if he was not planning to shoot someone? I remembered that hole in Papa’s jacket, and the blood on his shirt.
    Bunny listened, nodding his agreement. “Believe I’ll just nip down to the inn and leave off a note for Mr. Martin.”
    “He didn’t tell us what inn he was going to.” More amateurishness on Depew’s part.
    “White Hart,” Bunny said with an air of certainty.
    “Did he tell you so?”
    “Nope. Everyone stays at the White Hart.”
    With the Swan and the Red Lion and any number of decent hostelries doing a brisk business, I could not be so sure Depew would choose the White Hart, but Bunny had a nice knowledge of social customs. That, if nothing else, he had got from his one term at Cambridge.
    “If I get a wiggle on, I can be back for tea. Good thing I left my mount here,” he said, and left.
    I sank onto the chair behind Papa’s desk to consider what I should do. My orders were to keep an eye on the loft, and much as I dreaded facing Snoad, the robbery gave me an excellent excuse for going up there. I was just taking myself by the scruff of the neck to do it when there was a tap at the open door. Looking up, I saw Snoad standing in the doorway.
    He had put on a cravat and jacket to come belowstairs. In the dimness of the doorway, he might be mistaken for a gentleman. In any light, there was no ignoring his physical beauty. Yet it was a foreign sort of beauty, dark of hair and flashing of eye, like the more interesting sort of Frenchman.
    When he had caught my attention, he stepped in. “You heard the news?” he asked. I sensed the excitement in him. He was worried lest I suspect him.
    I quickly scanned what tack I should take, and remembered Depew’s advice. Behave as if you suspect nothing. “Yes indeed, Mrs. Gibbons has told us. Such an odd robbery, with nothing taken.”
    “Robbery?” he asked in surprise. “I don’t think it was a simple robbery.”
    “Oh really? What do you think, Snoad?” I asked, adopting a wide-eyed air of simplicity.
    He bit his lip, as if regretting his rash