three comprising his quarters, with comprehensive glances reviewing
their condition.

But, indeed, he hadn't left the reception-hall for the salon without
recognizing that things were in no respect as they ought to be: a hat
he had left on the hall rack had been moved to another peg; a chair had
been shifted six inches from its ordained position; and the door of a
clothes-press, which he had locked on leaving, now stood ajar.

Furthermore, the state of the salon, which he had furnished as a lounge
and study, and of the tiny dining-room and the bed-chamber adjoining,
bore out these testimonies to the fact that alien hands had thoroughly
ransacked the apartment, leaving no square inch unscrutinized.

Yet the proprietor missed nothing. His rooms were a private gallery of
valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind
of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare
books, manuscripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose
individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A
burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket
loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate
existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was
apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, was by no
means superficial.

Before checking off more elaborately his mental inventory, Lanyard
turned attention to the protective device, a simple but exhaustive
system of burglar-alarm wiring so contrived that any attempt to enter
the apartment save by means of a key which fitted both doors and of
which no duplicate existed would alarm both the concierge and the