“Wait one moment,” said I, as he took my hand. “Are you quite sure, Mr. Carruthers, that the robbery took place last night?” Before I uttered the last words, his eyes suddenly left my face, and were fixed on some object behind me. I turned, and saw in the doorway Mrs. Rayner, paler and more impassive than ever, and Sarah. All the doors at the Alders opened noiselessly, and they had overheard me. And, as I looked at Sarah’s face, my heart beat faster with fear and with suspicion become certainty, for I knew that I was on the right track. CHAPTER XXII. In his astonishment at Mrs. Rayner’s ghostlike entrance and appearance, Mr. Carruthers had not paid much attention to the end of my question, and I determined to try to get another opportunity of putting it to him. He expressed his sorrow to Mrs. Rayner at having caused her the trouble of receiving him when she was evidently suffering, and said that he had ventured to call to tell Miss Christie about a great robbery which had taken place in the house she had so recently visited, Denham Court. Nothing but physical suffering could have explained the impassive stolidity with which she listened, her great gray eyes staring straight in front of her, to the account of the robbery. She made no comment until it was over; then she turned to him and asked, with a faint expression of relief-- “Then nobody was hurt?” “Oh, no, there was no collision at all! They vanished like spirits, leaving no trace.” “I am very sorry they were not caught. My husband has been in town since Tuesday morning, and I am nervous while he is away,” said she, like one repeating a lesson. All this time Sarah stood by her, smelling-bottle in hand, as if prepared for her mistress to faint. Yet to my eyes Mrs. Rayner did not look worse than usual. When he rose to go, I accompanied Mr. Carruthers to the door, where a dog-cart was waiting for him; but Sarah, whose duty by her mistress’s side was suddenly over, followed close behind, and I had no chance of suggesting to him my own suspicions about the burglary. When he had gone, I reflected that it was better for me not to have said anything to a comparative stranger to implicate one of the servants in the house where I was living until I had consulted Mr. Rayner. To give vent to my excitement over the important secret I fancied myself on the track of, I wrote to Laurence. With Sarah about, a letter was a thing requiring caution, as the event proved. I was so sensible of this that I contented myself with giving an account of Mr. Carruthers’s visit and of the robbery at Denham Court, only saying, in conclusion, that it might have some connection with what he had seen, and that I had something to add to that. I said that I would write more fully as soon as I had an opportunity of going to Beaconsburgh to post my letter myself; and then I said a great deal more concerning different things which were perhaps really less important, but which were much pleasanter to write about.