itt replied thoughtfully, "I've no doubt Lord Stanway
will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to
save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you _have_
done some harm--you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest
man. But as to reputation, I've a professional reputation of my own. If I
help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed
in _my_ part of the business."

"But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not
expected--it would be impossible--to succeed invariably; and there are
only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other
conspicuous successes----"

"Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don't know, though--whether you
climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up
through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the
jamb, so as to bolt it after you."

"There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor
little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of
thought over the question of the trap-door--how to break it open so as to
leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I
had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of
suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How,
to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did
you ever see it?"

"Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
_didn't_ know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew
in the first place was that it was _you_ who had broken into the house. It
was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of
thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the
question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again,
and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew enough of
your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great
theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when
you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery.
Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive
seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to
lose five thousand pounds? You had not