That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing the burglar-track in the snow.  But how, above all, do you account for Lord Pharanx’s silence during and after the burglars’ visit—­if there was a visit?  He was, you must remember, alive all that time; they did not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard after the snow has ceased to fall,—­that is, after, long after, they have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses.  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.  Now, it is immediately comprehensible to me that the evidence of this woman at the public examinations was looked at askance.  There can be no doubt that she is a poor specimen of humanity, an undesirable servant, a peering, hysterical caricature of a woman.  Her statements, if formally recorded, were not believed; or if believed, were believed with only half the mind.  No attempt was made to deduce anything from them.  But for my part, if I wanted specially reliable evidence as to any matter of fact, it is precisely from such a being that I would seek it.  Let me draw you a picture of that class of intellect.  They have a greed for information, but the information, to satisfy them, must relate to actualities; they have no sympathy with fiction; it is from their impatience of what seems to be that springs their curiosity of what is.  Clio is their muse, and she alone.  Their whole lust is to gather knowledge through a hole, their whole faculty is to peep.  But they are destitute of imagination, and do not lie; in their passion for