levant to the other
matter. You see I had to tell Robert why we made such particular
inquiries about the door. Now the boy has been with me for years, and
came to me with a most unblemished character. Why, he was body-servant
for the adjutant and quartermaster of the First Artillery in the lively
old days at Fort Hamilton, and had unlimited opportunities for
peculation; but those gentlemen said he was simply above suspicion. But
he is sensitive, and it worried him fearfully lest Mr. Holmes should
think he or some of his assistants in the kitchen had been searching
those pockets. Now it was simply on his account--to convince him it was
somebody from outside that surreptitiously entered the hall while we
were all at dinner--that Holmes took the trouble to test the latch, and
with a little bit of stiff wire he showed us how Robert's device could
be circumvented."

"And Holmes has no doubt it was so accomplished?" asked the major,
tentatively.

Bayard looked embarrassed. "I cannot say just what he does think,
major, because he utterly refuses to speak of it. He said it was absurd
to make such an ado about nothing, and declared he would be seriously
annoyed if I pursued the subject."

"But you admit you have a theory of your own?" and Miller keenly eyed
his medical officer as though striving to read beneath that smooth and
polished surface.

"I have what might be called an hypothesis, a vague theory, and a
suspicion that would be entirely intangible but for one or two little
things that have recently come to my knowledge."

"And those little things point to an inmate of the garrison, do they
not?" asked Miller, with as much nonchalance as he could assume.

"I fear so," was the doctor's answer. "But you asked why Mrs. Miller
was urged not to come to Mr. McLean's room just yet; that is the way
Weeks put it to me when I overhauled him, which I did at the moment the
matter came to my ears. Rest assured I was quite as ready to take
umbrage at his action,--more so, rather, than you could have been. But,
major, could you have heard his explanation, you yourself would have
been the first to say no one but his physician should be allowed to
stay there. Weeks even sent the hospital nurse away, and sat up with
him all night himself."

"Has he been delirious?"

"Yes, and in his delirium he has been talking of things that have
completely stampeded poor Weeks. Of course he could not give me the
faintest inkling of what they wer