When he entered the library, three minutes later, he found Roden Marsh already there.
"So--you have heard," he said, as he shut the door, and paused for a moment before advancing. "I can read your news in your face."
"I wanted to be the first to tell it you, so that you might be prepared; but I could find no opportunity of seeing you alone."
"My dear Rodd, night and day for twenty years I have never been otherwise than prepared. But tell me what it is you have heard. At present I am altogether in the dark. That Gumley has been arrested, and has confessed to the robbery of my first wife's jewels--so much I have been told, but beyond that I know nothing."
"Yesterday morning Gumley, who has not been seen in this part of the country for a number of years, tried to pawn a lady's watch. The suspicions of the pawnbroker were aroused, the police were called in, Gumley's lodging was searched, and in it was found nearly the whole of Mrs. Drelincourt's stolen property. This morning I happened to be in Sunbridge on business when Gumley was brought up at the court house before Mr. Ormsby and two other magistrates. It was Draycot, the chief constable, who told me of the arrest, so, of course, I took care to be present at the hearing."
"It seems strange, does it not, that the fellow should have kept his ill-gotten gains by him all these years?"
"Not when you know the circumstances, as you shall hear."
At this point Drelincourt sat down, and motioned Rodd to do the same.
"To go back to the affair of twenty years ago," resumed the latter. "It seems Gumley's cupidity had been excited by the sight of the jewelry worn at different times by Mrs. Drelincourt, besides which he had sworn to be revenged on her for the horsewhipping she had administered to him a few days before the robbery. He obtained access to the dressing room through the window, by means of a ladder planted outside, purloined by him from one of the outhouses, and duly taken back when he had accomplished his purpose. He had chosen a time when he knew there was not much likelihood of his being interrupted, Lucille, Mrs. Drelincourt's maid, who slept next her mistress' dressing room, being out of the way on leave of absence. Having found the jewel casket, he emptied it of its contents, and got back to his own room at the east lodge by the way he had come. With the exception of the locket afterwards found on him----"