suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have their boxes
searched, and this was done; everything was turned over, from the butler's
to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should have had this
carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it was my guest,
and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little more to be
said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and the thing's as
great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard man got as far as
suspecting _me_ before he gave it up altogether, but give it up he did in
the end. I think that's all I know about the first robbery. Is it clear?"

"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
the place, but they can wait. What next?"

"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of the
same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's disaster--in
February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young widow, who had been
a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us for a week or so. The
girls don't trouble about the London season, you know, and I have no town
house, so they were glad to have their old friend here for a little in the
dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active young lady, and was scarcely in
the house half an hour before she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with
Eva--my daughter--to look up old people in the village that she used to
know before she was married. So they set off in the afternoon, and made
such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a
small plain gold brooch--not at all valuable, you know; two or three
pounds, I suppose--which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that
sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her
dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close