Why
then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
night.'
'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow--the
neckerchief!'
Zaleski smiled.
'Burglars,' he said, 'are plain, honest folk who have a just notion of
the value of jewelry when they see it. They very properly regard it as
mere foolish waste to drop precious stones about in the snow, and would
refuse to company with a man weak enough to let fall his neckerchief on
a cold night. The whole business of the burglars was a particularly
inartistic trick, unworthy of its author. The mere facility with which
Randolph discovered the buried jewels by the aid of a dim lantern,
should have served as a hint to an educated police not afraid of facing
the improbable. The jewels had been _put_ there with the object of
throwing suspicion on the imaginary burglars; with the same design the
catch of the window had been wrenched off, the sash purposely left
open, the track made, the valuables taken from Lord Pharanx's room. All
this was deliberately done by some one--would it be rash to say at once
by whom?
'Our suspicions having now lost their whole character of vagueness, and
begun to lead us in a perfectly definite direction, let us examine the
statements of Hester Dyett.
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