“Yes,” answered Humblethorne, “but they would have to know the habits and ways of the house when they got here. Just think, Birts, supposing your theory’s the right one, of the risks the fellow ran. Why come then, about midnight according to Mr. Castle, anyway before half-past one? The chances of running into some one were enormous. Think of it, through the pantry and the dining-room into the hall, of all places. It won’t do—not like that. Some one may have come there, but, if any one did, it wasn’t just a fellow after the silver.” At that moment he heard some one come into the dining-room, the door of which he had left open. Looking in, he found Fairlie putting away the silver which had come down from the luncheon-trays. “Fairlie,” he said, “I thought you told me particularly that every window and door was fastened all right last night?” “And so they were when I went round,” repeated Fairlie, decidedly. “But, as I told Birts, I only saw to the doors and the windows of the living-rooms down here, all except the study and Mr. Castle’s room, that is, of course; it wasn’t my place to see to them, when they were used after dinner. I shut that window in the pantry myself when I finished in there about nine o’clock; so I didn’t look at it again.” “When did you find it broken?” Humblethorne asked, turning to Birts. “Fairlie came and told me about it, let me see, about half an hour after you’d gone,” replied Birts. “How was it no one discovered it before?” “On an ordinary morning,” Fairlie replied, “of course either Alfred or myself would have been bound to see it first thing in the morning; but everything has been at sixes and sevens all day. The maids don’t go in there. Alfred, he’d been up and out on his bicycle, and I let him off when he came back, and I didn’t have a minute to myself. I did go into the pantry, but just hastily and out again, and didn’t think to look at the window in the corner. It wasn’t till I’d had my dinner that I came in and saw it. And then of course I called Birts’s attention to it immediately. I wish I had seen it last night,” added the old man: “then we would have had some chance before the fellow had gone far.” “Some one may have got in when the servants were all at supper,” remarked Birts hopefully to Humblethorne when they were alone again in the hall, “and hid himself till he thought the house was quiet. He wouldn’t know Sir Roger and Mr. Castle were working late in the study.” “He knew a good deal if he could dare to come in and hide himself in a place like this, full of people,” was all Humblethorne answered. “Now I’m going to take a look round.” He went along the passage intending to begin his survey of the ground floor in the study in which Sir Roger had last been seen alive, whilst Birts went out to interrogate the gardeners and look for traces of the man who, he was convinced, had come to burgle and been led on into murder.