Then he began to ask himself whether any one could have been in the study while he was not there. His study was a _sanctum_. It was not a place to which people went freely. A maidservant cleaned it out in the morning; but the cleaning was in some sense superficial, for it was as much as her life was worth to disturb Mr. Brandiston’s papers or letters. The same maidservant came in the evening during dinner to look at the fire and sweep up the grate. Except for these purposes no servant would naturally enter the study, unless it were the butler, and he only for the sake of seeing if Mr. Brandiston was there when a master or somebody else wanted him; for it was Mr. Brandiston’s rule that nobody was to be shown into the study, if he himself was not there. The study was the place where Mr. Brandiston interviewed the boys of his house; but it was understood that they must come and see him at fixed times--at nine in the morning, or after prayers at night--unless there were some exceptionally pressing reason for seeing him. Still it was always possible that a boy would enter the study during the day. Mrs. Brandiston no doubt might come there, though she did not in fact come often; but he did not associate his wife with the thought of the stolen paper. As Mr. Brandiston cast his mind over the time that had elapsed since the Tuesday evening when he received the papers, he could recall various interviews with masters and boys, but he did not think that they had entered the study while he was out of it. Any one making his way to the study from the boys’ part of the house must pass by the butler’s pantry. Accordingly Mr. Brandiston rang the bell, and asked the butler if he remembered seeing any boy go into his study or come out of it between nine and ten o’clock on the evening before. The butler, a rather sententious person, said he remembered hearing two boys--there might have been more, but he was certain of two--knock at the study door during that part of the evening--he would not like to swear, but he felt sure it was between nine and ten--and he saw them go by the pantry, though he did not take particular notice of them. Being asked who the boys were, the butler hesitated a good deal--he was a man who did not like committing himself--but finally expressed his belief that they were ‘Mr. Venables’ (who was now the head of the house) ‘and _that_ Mr. Eversley’ (the ‘that’ meant only that the butler, like the house in general, looked upon Gerald as a rather curious, distinct, inexplicable creature). That was the first step in Mr. Brandiston’s investigation. It did not lead him far, but he went to bed in some disquietude. He did not tell the butler the reason of his inquiry.