My immediate part was a little hard after the excitement of those small hours. I will only say that we had agreed that it would be wisest for me to lie like a log among the rest for half an hour, before staggering to my feet and rousing house and police; and that in that half-hour Barney Maguire crashed to the floor, without waking either himself or his companions, though not without bringing my beating heart into the very roof of my mouth. It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet sufficiently recovered to supply. And in the end I was permitted to retire from the scene until required to give further information, or to identify the prisoner whom the good police confidently expected to make before the day was out. I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my hansom. His face alarmed me more than any I had left in Half-moon Street. It alone might have spelled my ruin. "Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he cried. "The thieves have taken everything they could lay hands on." "Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the Albany. "The door's been forced with a jimmy," said the porter. "It was the milkman who found it out. There's a constable up there now." A constable poking about in my flat of all others! I rushed upstairs without waiting for the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept _my_ trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah lock. The lock was broken--the drawer void. "Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my heels. "Yes, indeed--some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true. But the family was not mine. And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street; it was his wife who looked after the flat. "Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I am, this minute!" And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Piccadilly on the way.