“I can’t tell you on the spot,” he admitted, grudgingly. “We have half a dozen that I could lay my hands on; but we’ve got more than that lying about somewhere or other. They get left in odd places. The gardeners sometimes use them for shooting rats for amusement and so on, and one never knows where the guns are till one asks for them.” Sir Clinton seemed rather taken aback. “You seem to have a regular armoury,” he said. “I’m keen on air-guns,” Arthur explained. “You’re not going to take _them_ away, are you?” Sir Clinton waved the suggestion aside at once. “Of course not. I only asked out of curiosity. I knew you were interested.” Arthur seemed to be relieved by this. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said in a much more cordial tone. “So long as you leave me one of them, it’ll do all I want.” “Now, Dr. Ardsley, if you’ll just show me where this pot used to stand, I think we shall be able to go,” Sir Clinton said, turning to another matter and dismissing the air-gun question. At this, Ernest came forward. “I think I can show you where it stood,” he volunteered. “I remember Roger bringing it back from South Africa. He used to keep it on a shelf in his study in his last house, I remember; the third shelf from the top, to the right of the door. Then when he came here, he had such a lot of stuff that he’d collected that he found he’d got to make a museum of it; so he put it all together in this room. I’ve been over it all with him—I helped him to arrange it, I remember. But it seemed to me very dull. Not a bit interesting. But, of course, if you like, I could show it to you and tell you all about it. Perhaps it might interest you, though I found it dull. People’s tastes differ so much. One never can tell, can one?” Ardsley had paid no attention to Ernest’s flood of information. He had gone down to the proper shelf and now he pointed out the empty space to Sir Clinton. The Chief Constable examined the place carefully, but said nothing. At length he went to the windows of the room and inspected the catches. “Anyone could have got in here without much trouble,” he commented. “You don’t seem much afraid of burglars, Mr. Shandon.” “No,” Ernest admitted, refixing his eyeglasses with care and looking wisely at the window-fastenings. “You see, we’ve never had any burglary here. It may seem strange, for of course Whistlefield’s a bit isolated and it might be a good place to burgle. I never burgled myself, you know, so I don’t really know about these things. There’s a lot of silver, of course,” he added. “Perhaps it is strange that we never had a burglary. Now I come to think of it, it would be quite an easy house to get into. We ought to have burglar alarms put on. Really, things are an awful bother. Can you recommend a good burglar-alarm, Sir Clinton?” The Chief Constable deprecated the proposed task with a smile.