bbery."

"Just so! And your daughter, as I have gathered, was clearly absent from
the spot each time--indeed, was in company with the party robbed. Your
niece, now?"

"Why hang it all, Mr. Hewitt, I can't talk of my niece as a suspected
criminal! The poor girl's under my protection, and I really can't
allow----"

Hewitt raised his hand, and shook his head deprecatingly.

"My dear sir, haven't I said that I don't suspect a soul? _Do_ let me know
how the people were distributed, as nearly as possible. Let me see. It was
your, niece, I think, who found that Mrs. Armitage's door was locked--this
door, in fact--on the day she lost her brooch?"

"Yes, it was."

"Just so--at the time when Mrs. Armitage herself had forgotten whether she
locked it or not. And yesterday--was she out then?"

"No, I think not. Indeed, she goes out very little--her health is usually
bad. She was indoors, too, at the time of the Heath robbery, since you
ask. But come, now, I don't like this. It's ridiculous to suppose that
_she_ knows anything of it."

"I don't suppose it, as I have said. I am only asking for information.
That is all your resident family, I take it, and you know nothing of
anybody else's movements--except, perhaps, Mr. Lloyd's?"

"Lloyd? Well, you know yourself that he was out with the ladies when the
first robbery took place. As to the others, I don't remember. Yesterday he
was probably in his room, writing. I think that acquits _him_, eh?" Sir
James looked quizzically into the broad face of the affable detective, who
smiled and replied:

"Oh, of course nobody can be in two places at once, else what would become
of the _alibi_ as an institution? But, as I have said, I am only setting
my facts in order. Now, you see, we get down to the servants--unless some
stranger is the party wanted. Shall we go outside now?"

Lenton Croft was a large, desultory sort of house, nowhere more than three
floors high, and mostly only two. It had been added to bit by bit, till it
zigzagged about its site, as Sir James Norris expressed it, "like a game
of dominoes." Hewitt scrutinized its external features carefully as they
strolled around, and stopped some little while before the windows of the
two bed-rooms he had just seen from the inside. Presently they approached
the stables and coach-house, where a groom was washing the wheels of the
dog-cart.

"Do you mind my smoking?" Hewitt asked Sir James. "Perhaps you will take a
cigar yourself-