Martin Hewitt, Investigator | Page 4

and this was done; everything was turned over,
from the butler's to the new kitchen-maid's. I don't know that I should
have had this carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but it
was my guest, and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's little
more to be said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it all, and
the thing's as great a mystery now as ever. I believe the Scotland Yard
man got as far as suspecting me before he gave it up altogether, but
give it up he did in the end. I think that's all I know about the first
robbery. Is it clear?"
"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
the place, but they can wait. What next?"
"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair, that I
should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been for one
circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the work of
the same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's
disaster--in February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young
widow, who had been a school-fellow of my daughter's, stayed with us
for a week or so. The girls don't trouble about the London season, you
know, and I have no town house, so they were glad to have their old
friend here for a little in the dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very active
young lady, and was scarcely in the house half an hour before she
arranged a drive in a pony-cart with Eva--my daughter--to look up old
people in the village that she used to know before she was married. So
they set off in the afternoon, and made such a round of it that they were
late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a small plain gold brooch--not at all
valuable, you know; two or three pounds, I suppose--which she used to
pin up a cloak or anything of that sort. Before she went out she stuck
this in the pin-cushion on her dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a
good one, I believe--lying close by."
"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had
occupied, I take it?"
"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
went--taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when
Mrs. Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a

little tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the
curious thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was left
where it had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not
she had locked the door herself, although she found it locked when she
returned; but my niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it
once--because she remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the
landing near by--and found it safely locked. The gas-fitter, whom we
didn't know at the time, but who since seems to be quite an honest
fellow, was ready to swear that nobody but my niece had been to the
door while he was in sight of it--which was almost all the time. As to
the window, the sash-line had broken that very morning, and Mrs.
Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or ten inches
with a brush; and, when she returned, that brush, sash, and all were
exactly as she had left them. Now I scarcely need tell you what an
awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that
unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace
it, with the brush, exactly as he found it."
"Just so. I suppose the brooch, was really gone? I mean, there was no
chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
"Oh, none at all! There was a most careful search."
"Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
"Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It was a
first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself--built it out from a
smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at the
window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that
couldn't have been the way. Somebody or other was in the
billiard-room the whole time, and nobody could have got over the roof
(which is nearly all skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there
myself for an hour or two, taking a little practice."
"Well, was anything done?"
"Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing

came of it. It was such a small