“I forgot about them at the time, sir.  I found them in an old pocket this evening, and I was so uneasy about the house shut up with a lot of valuable things in it and nobody to give an eye to them that I just slipped across to see everything was all right.”

“You came here after dark, and let yourself in with a private key after you had been strictly ordered not to come near the place?  You have the audacity to admit you have done this?”

“Well, it’s this way, sir.  I was a trusted servant of Sir Horace’s.  I knew a great deal about his private life, if I may say so.  I know he kept a lot of private papers in this room, and I wanted to make sure they were safe—­I didn’t like them being in this empty house, sir.  I couldn’t sleep in my bed of nights for thinking of them, sir.  I felt last night as if my poor dead master was standing at my bedside, urging me to go over.  I am very sorry I disobeyed the police orders, Mr. Rolfe, but I acted for the best.”

“Hill, you are lying, you are keeping something back.  Unless you immediately tell me the real reason of your visit to this house tonight I will take you down to the Hampstead Police Station and have you locked up.  This visit of yours will take a lot of explaining away after your previous confession, Hill.  It’s enough to put you in the dock with Birchill.”

Hill’s eyes, which had been fixed on Rolfe’s face, wavered towards the doorway, as though he were meditating a rush for freedom.  But he merely remarked: 

“I’ve told you the truth, sir, though perhaps not all of it.  I came across to see if I could find some of Sir Horace’s private papers which are missing.”

“How do you know there are any papers missing?”

“As I said before, Mr. Rolfe, Sir Horace trusted me and he didn’t take the trouble to hide things from me.”

“You mean that he often left his desk open with important papers scattered about it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you made a practice of going through them?”

“I didn’t make a practice of it,” protested Hill.  “But sometimes I glanced at one or two of them.  I thought there was no harm in it, knowing that Sir Horace trusted me.”

“And some papers that you knew were there are now missing.  Do you mean stolen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did you see them last?”

“Just before Inspector Chippenfield came—­the morning after the body was discovered.  You remember, sir, that he came straight up here while you stayed downstairs talking to Constable Flack.”

“Do you mean to suggest that Inspector Chippenfield stole them?”

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think he saw them.  Sir Horace kept them in this little place at the back of the desk.  Look at it, sir.  It’s a sort of secret drawer.”

Rolfe went over to the desk, and Hill explained to him how the hiding place could be closed and opened.  It was at the back of the desk under the pigeonholes, and the fact that the pigeonholes came close down to the desk hid the secret drawer and the spring which controlled it.