"Is Mr. Simon Rattar at home?" he enquired in a courteous voice and with a soothing smile that won her heart at once; and on hearing that Mr. Rattar always spent the afternoons at his office and would not return before five o'clock, his disappointment was so manifest that she felt sincerely sorry for him. He hesitated and was about to go away when a happy idea struck him. "Might I come in and write a line to be left for him?" he asked, and Mary felt greatly relieved at being able to assist the gentleman to assuage his disappointment in this way. She led him into the library and somehow or other by the time she had got him ink and paper and pen she found herself talking to this distinguished looking stranger in the most friendly way. It was not that he was forward or gallant, far from it; simply that he was so nice and so remarkably sympathetic. Within five minutes of making his acquaintance, Mary felt that she could tell him almost anything. This sympathetic visitor made several appreciative remarks about the house and garden, and then, just as he had dipped his pen into the ink, he remarked: "Rather a tempting house for burglars, I should think--if such people existed in these peaceable parts." "Oh, but they do, sir," she assured him. "We had one in this very house one night!" XXXIII THE HOUSE OF MYSTERIES The sympathetic stranger almost laid down his pen, he was so interested by this unexpected reply. "What!" he exclaimed. "Really a burglary in this house? I say, how awfully interesting! When did it happen?" "Well, sir," said Mary in an impressive voice, "it's a most extraordinary thing, but it was actually the very self same night of Sir Reginald's murder!" So surprised and interested was the visitor that he actually did lay down his pen this time. "Was it the same man, do you think?" he asked in a voice that seemed to thrill with sympathetic excitement. "Indeed I've sometimes wondered!" said she. "Tell me how it happened!" "Well, sir," said Mary, "it was on the very morning that we heard about Sir Reginald--only before we'd heard, and I was pulling up the blinds in the wee sitting room when I says to myself. 'There's been some one in at this window!'" "The wee sitting room," repeated her visitor. "Which is that?" He seemed so genuinely interested that before she realised what liberties she was taking in the master's house, she had led him into a small sitting room at the end of a short passage leading out of the hall. It had evidently been intended for a smoking room or study when the villa was built, but was clearly never used by Mr. Rattar, for it contained little furniture beyond bookcases. Its window looked on to the side of the garden and not towards the drive, and a grass lawn lay beneath it, while the room itself was obviously the most isolated, and from a burglarious point of view the most promising, on the ground floor. "This is the room, sir," said Mary. "And look! You still can see the marks on the sash."