The official prompter arrived at the end of the monologue with the remark that he had been having a bit of a smoke in the garden and his watch had gone wrong. Leaving him to discuss the point with Charteris, Spennie slipped quietly away, and flitted up the stairs toward Sir Thomas' dressing room. At the door, he stopped and listened. There was no sound. The house might have been deserted. He opened the door, and switched on the electric light. Fortune was with him. On the dressing table, together with a bunch of keys and some small change, lay a brown leather pocketbook. Evidently Sir Thomas did not share Lady Blunt's impression that the world was waiting for a chance to rob him as soon as his back was turned. Spennie opened the pocketbook, and counted the contents. There were two ten-pound notes, and four of five pounds. He took a specimen of each variety, replaced the pocketbook, and crept out of the door. Then he walked rapidly down the corridor to his own room. Just as he reached it, he received a shock only less severe than the former one from the fact that this time no hand was placed on his shoulder. "Spennie!" cried a voice. He turned, to see Molly. She wore the costume of the stage milkmaid. Coming out of her room after dressing for her part, she had been in time to see Spennie emerge through Sir Thomas' door with a look on his face furtive enough to have made any jury bring in a verdict of guilty on any count without further evidence. She did not know what he had been doing; but she was very certain that it was something which he ought to have left undone. "Er--hullo, Molly!" said Spennie bonelessly. "What were you doing in Uncle Thomas' room, Spennie?" "Nothing. I was just looking round." "Just looking round?" "That's all." Molly was puzzled. "Why did you look like that when you came out?" "Like what?" "So guilty." "Guilty! What _are_ you talking about?" Molly suddenly saw light. "Spennie," she said, "what were you putting in your pocket as you came out?" "Putting in my pocket!" said Spennie, rallying with the desperation of one fighting a lost cause. "What do you mean?" "You were putting something." Another denial was hovering on Spennie's lips, when, in a flash, he saw what he had not seen before, the cloud of suspicion which must hang over him when the loss of the notes was discovered. Sir Thomas would remember that he had tried to borrow money from him. Wesson would wonder how he had become possessed of twenty pounds. And Molly had actually seen him coming out of the room, putting something in his pocket. He threw himself at the mercy of the court. "It's like this, Molly," he said. And, having prefaced his narrative with the sound remark that he had been a fool, he gave her a summary of recent events. "I see," said Molly. "And you must pay him at once?" "By the end of the week. We had--we had a bit of a row." "What about?"