tly
tottered and fainted before some awful fact which the open safe had
revealed to him; he had caught himself against a chair which lay on the
floor, and then finally sunk, unconscious, into the arm-chair.

"All this, which takes some time to describe," continued the man in the
corner, "took, remember, only a second to pass like a flash through
Mrs. Ireland's mind; she quickly turned the key of the glass door,
which was on the inside, and with the help of James Fairbairn, the
watchman, she carried her husband upstairs to his room, and immediately
sent both for the police and for a doctor.

"As Mrs. Ireland had anticipated, her husband had received a severe
mental shock which had completely prostrated him. The doctor prescribed
absolute quiet, and forbade all worrying questions for the present. The
patient was not a young man; the shock had been very severe--it was a
case, a very slight one, of cerebral congestion--and Mr. Ireland's
reason, if not his life, might be gravely jeopardised by any attempt to
recall before his enfeebled mind the circumstances which had preceded
his collapse.

"The police therefore could proceed but slowly in their investigations.
The detective who had charge of the case was necessarily handicapped,
whilst one of the chief actors concerned in the drama was unable to help
him in his work.

"To begin with, the robber or robbers had obviously not found their way
into the manager's inner room through the bank premises. James Fairbairn
had been on the watch all night, with the electric light full on, and
obviously no one could have crossed the outer office or forced the
heavily barred doors without his knowledge.

"There remained the other access to the room, that is, the one through
the hall of the house. The hall door, it appears, was always barred and
bolted by Mr. Ireland himself when he came home, whether from the
theatre or his club. It was a duty he never allowed any one to perform
but himself. During his annual holiday, with his wife and family, his
son, who usually had the sub-manager to stay with him on those
occasions, did the bolting and barring--but with the distinct
understanding that this should be done by ten o'clock at night.

"As I have already explained to you, there is only a glass partition
between the general office and the manager's private room, and,
according to James Fairbairn's account, this was naturally always left
wide open so that he, during his night watch, wo