"It is a warning to me to keep out of cases in which I feel no interest," said Quarles. "Still, circumstances have aroused my interest now. There is no doubt, Wigan, that there was every reason to look for an amateur in this business, and in spite of the hooligan club, you seem to have been half conscious of this fact. You would have been glad to know what the romance connected with the jewels was. Not idle curiosity, I take it, but a grasping for a clue in that direction. Miss Belford cannot help you beyond writing to her aunt's old friend in Yorkshire, yet had it not been for the hooligans' club, I fancy you would have followed this trail more keenly. According to Miss Belford, apart from the jewels, her aunt had not left sufficient to enable the niece to go on living in Cedars Road, yet while Miss Morrison was alive it was sufficient, apparently. Of course the niece may have more expensive tastes, but under the circumstances it was rather a curious statement. She believes that a past romance was the reason why the jewels were left to the church, and she admits that she was disappointed they were not left to her. It seems possible, doesn't it, that at one time she hoped to have them after her aunt's death? That would mean there was no valid reason why she shouldn't, and I think you might reasonably have speculated that she knew more of the romance than she admitted." "You wouldn't have thought so if you had talked with her." "Possibly not," returned Quarles. "I started handicapped in this case, I was not interested in it; Zena was not at hand to ask one of her absurd questions, which have so often put me on the right road. The road we have traveled has landed us here, and I have been thinking of another road we might have traveled. We will forget the hooligans' club. We start with the assumption that the robbery was the work of an amateur, we have ample reasons for thinking so. We do not suspect the vicar, we are inclined to exonerate the verger, and we finally decide that Mr. Hayes is innocent. We are met with a difficulty at once. How was the church entered? We may assume that some person in the Sunday evening congregation remained hidden in the church, committed the burglary, opening the safe with a duplicate key, marking the wall and the door, and giving a wrench to the lock to suggest ordinary thieves. Had it not been for the hooligan club, these efforts to mislead would not have been very successful, I fancy. They show that the amateur had small knowledge of the ways of experts. The thief, having secured the chalice, is still locked in the church. How to escape? It is a case of an all night vigil. When the verger arrives on Monday morning and passes through the church towards the vestry, the thief slips out. Now it is obvious that to make this possible the thief must have known a great deal about the church and its working, must have come in contact with the vicar constantly, or it would have been