tive;
and it is my duty to find out the facts of any case I am put on,
without fear or favour to anyone. I would rather speak to you alone,
in confidence if I may, without reference to any duty of anyone to
anyone, except mine to Scotland Yard."

"Of course! of course!" I answered mechanically, my heart sinking, I
did not know why. "Be quite frank with me. I assure you of my
confidence."

"Thank you, sir. I take it that what I say is not to pass beyond
you--not to anyone. Not to Miss Trelawny herself, or even to Mr.
Trelawny when he becomes well again."

"Certainly, if you make it a condition!" I said a little more stiffly.
The man recognised the change in my voice or manner, and said
apologetically:

"Excuse me, sir, but I am going outside my duty in speaking to you at
all on the subject. I know you, however, of old; and I feel that I can
trust you. Not your word, sir, that is all right; but your discretion!"

I bowed. "Go on!" I said. He began at once:

"I have gone over this case, sir, till my brain begins to reel; but I
can't find any ordinary solution of it. At the time of each attempt no
one has seemingly come into the house; and certainly no one has got
out. What does it strike you is the inference?"

"That the somebody--or the something--was in the house already," I
answered, smiling in spite of myself.

"That's just what I think," he said, with a manifest sigh of relief.
"Very well! Who can be that someone?"

"'Someone, or something,' was what I said," I answered.

"Let us make it 'someone,' Mr. Ross! That cat, though he might have
scratched or bit, never pulled the old gentleman out of bed, and tried
to get the bangle with the key off his arm. Such things are all very
well in books where your amateur detectives, who know everything before
it's done, can fit them into theories; but in Scotland Yard, where the
men aren't all idiots either, we generally find that when crime is
done, or attempted, it's people, not things, that are at the bottom of
it."

"Then make it 'people' by all means, Sergeant."

"We were speaking of 'someone,' sir."

"Quite right. Someone, be it!"

"Did it ever strike you, sir, that on each of the three separate
occasions where outrage was effected, or attempted, there was one
person who was the first to be present and to give the alarm?"

"Let me see! Miss Trelawny, I believe, gave the alarm on the first
occasion. I was present myself, if fast asleep, on th