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.“Dammit!” the Marquis swore, goaded at last into speech.“I will see that you hang on a gibbet, if it is the last thing I do.”“I doubt it,” the highwayman replied coolly.“But even that might give you a new interest, although not such an enjoyable one as winning a race or squiring a beautiful lady.”“I have no wish to listen to your impertinence,” the Marquis retorted.The highwayman made a sound that was not exactly a laugh but more of a chuckle as if he was glad he had got under the Marquis’s skin.Then he made a gesture with the pistol in his right hand and the two other men slipped past him through the window.The Marquis heard them running across the garden.The highwayman waited, as if making sure they were safely away.Then he said,“I suggest, gentlemen, that you keep your seats for the next two minutes.If you are thinking of following me, I would like you to know that I am a very accurate shot.”As he spoke, he moved back through the window still with his pistols pointed at the Marquis and Anthony.Then with a swiftness that somehow seemed almost magical he vanished out of sight.One moment he was there, the next he had gone and, although the Marquis pushed back his chair and went to the open window, by the time he had reached it the garden, now in shadow, was quiet and empty.Then, as he listened, far away in the distance he heard the sound of galloping hoofs.“My God, I would not have believed it!” Anthony exclaimed.“I have never been so astonished in my whole life!”The Marquis was looking out into the garden still listening, then after a moment he said,“I suppose it’s useless to try and follow them?”“I should imagine completely!” Anthony answered.“By the time we are mounted they could be two or three miles away.”They walked back to the table and sat down and the 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
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