m. At her suggestion, the bag was unstrapped and examined. Not
only the unimportant keys (with another one added to their number) but
the smaller key which opened her desk were found safe inside. "We will
talk about it to-morrow," she said. Having wished him good-night, she
paused in the act of opening the door, and looked at the lock. There was
no key in it, but there was another protection in the shape of a bolt
underneath. "Did you bolt your door when you went to bed?" she asked.

"No."

The obvious suspicion, suggested by this negative answer, crossed her
mind.

"What has become of the key of your door?" she inquired next.

Jack hung his head. "I put it along with the other keys," he confessed,
"to make the bag look bigger."

Alone again in her own room, Mrs. Wagner stood by the reanimated fire,
thinking.

While Jack was asleep, any person, with a soft step and a delicate hand,
might have approached his bedside, when the house was quiet for the
night, and have taken his bag. And, again, any person within hearing of
the alarm that he had raised, some hours afterwards, might have put the
bag back, while he was recovering himself in Mrs. Wagner's room. Who
could have been near enough to hear the alarm? Somebody in the empty
bedrooms above? Or somebody in the solitary offices below? If a theft had
really been committed, the one likely object of it would be the key of
the desk. This pointed to the probability that the alarm had reached the
ears of the thief in the offices. Was there any person in the house, from
the honest servants upwards, whom it would be reasonably possible to
suspect of theft? Mrs. Wagner returned to her bed. She was not a woman to
be daunted by trifles--but on this occasion her courage failed her when
she was confronted by her own question.

CHAPTER X

The office hours, in the winter-time, began at nine o'clock. From the
head-clerk to the messenger, not one of the persons employed slept in the
house: it was Mr. Keller's wish that they should all be absolutely free
to do what they liked with their leisure time in the evening: "I know
that I can trust them, from the oldest to the youngest man in my
service," he used to say; "and I like to show it."

Under these circumstances, Mrs. Wagner had only to rise earlier than
usual, to be sure of having the whole range of the offices entirely to
herself. At eight o'clock, with Jack in attendance, she was seated at her
desk, carefully examining t