“Nothing else was even moved?”

“Nothing at all.  Then the thief must have escaped by the window, although it was not quite clear how.  The walking party approached the house with a full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the robbery must have been actually taking place a moment or two before they turned up.

“There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window, but a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the edge of the lawn.  The gardener explained, however, that he had put the ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon.”

“Of course it might easily have been used again after that and put back.”

“Just what the Scotland Yard man said.  He was pretty sharp, too, on the gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it.  No stranger had been seen in the neighborhood, nor had passed the lodge gates.  Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a stranger.  A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to the room where a lady—­only arrived the day before—­had left a valuable jewel, and away again without being seen.  So all the people about the house were suspected in turn.  The servants offered, in a body, to have their boxes searched, 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.”