In speaking thus of Mr. Brancker, Ephraim had no ulterior motive, nor did it strike him at the time that his words might be the means of placing John in a very awkward position. Two more constables had arrived by now. Mr. Mace planted one of them at the door of the strong room. "Don't let anyone enter here without my permission," he said. The other man he sent in search of Mr. Brancker, while Mr. Judd left the Bank at the same time to break the news to Clement Hazeldine. At the doctor's wish Mrs. Sweet and Peggy had retired. They would be required later on, but at present they were only in the way. "There seems to have been robbery here as well as murder," said Mr. Mace to Sweet. "I suppose you have no idea how it has all come about?" Sweet had recovered his faculties in some measure by this time. Sorry though he was for Mr. Hazeldine, he yet felt that he himself must of necessity be a personage of some note for a considerable time to come. Now that he had partly recovered from his first fright, he was beginning to swell with a sense of self-importance, and he proceeded to put on his most official air, and began to enter into a long, rambling statement which might have lasted for half an hour had he not been sharply pulled up. "Tut-tut, man, can't you answer a plain question in a few plain words?" said Mr. Mace, impatiently. "Do you, or do you not, know anything of this affair?" "No, I don't," answered Sweet, shortly, and very red in the face. "I thought as much," said Mr. Mace, dryly. "In these cases the person one would naturally expect to know the most is nearly sure to know the least. But, don't be afraid, my good man; you will have an opportunity of telling all you know before long. Meanwhile, the less you say the better, except when you are asked a question by those who have a right to know." Mr. Mace mounted a chair, and examined the iron bars which protected the two windows of the office. There was nothing the matter with them. Evidently no entrance had been effected that way. "And now you and I will take a little walk round the premises," said Mr. Mace to Obed; so away they went, the latter ungraciously enough, although he was in a dreadful state of puzzle as to how anyone could possibly have made his way into the Bank overnight, and left it again without his knowledge. The front door was first of all examined, and afterwards the back door, which opened into a small paved yard, shut in by a high wall protected by revolving iron spikes. There was nothing about either of them to show that they had been tampered with in any way. The two men went next into the general office, where everything seemed in its usual state, and from that they passed into the inner office. Here Mr. Mace's sharp eyes seemed drawn as if by instinct to the blood-stains on the floor. "Ha! What are these? Who has been here?" he said. "God bless my heart! I know no more about 'em than you do, sir!" cried Sweet, beginning once more to quake like a jelly.