"This is the room, sir," said Mary. "And look! You still can see the marks on the sash."
"Yes," said the visitor thoughtfully, "they seem to have been made by a tacketty boot."
"And forbye that, there was a wee bit mud on the floor and a tacket mark in that!"
"Shut, sir; and the most extraordinary thing was that it was snibbed too! That's what made the master say it couldna have been a burglar at all, or how did he snib the window after he went out again?"
"Then Mr. Rattar didn't believe it was a burglar?"
"N--no, sir," said Mary, a little reluctantly.
"No, sir; that was another funny thing. But it must have been a burglar!"
"What about the other windows, and the doors? Were they all fastened in the morning?"
"Yes, sir, it's the truth they were," she admitted.
"And what did Mr. Rattar do with the piece of mud?"
The sympathetic stranger crossed to the window and looked out.
"Grass underneath, I see," he observed. "No footprints outside, I suppose?"
"Did the police come down and make enquiries?"
"Well, sir, the master said he would inform the pollis, but then came the news of the murder, and no one had any thoughts for anything else after that."
The sympathetic visitor stood by the window very thoughtfully for a few moments, and then turned and rewarded her with the most charming smile.
"Thank you awfully for showing me all this," said he. "By the way, what's your name?" She told him and he added with a still nicer smile, "Thank you, Mary!"
They returned to the library and he sat down before the table again, but just as he was going to pick up the pen a thought seemed to strike him.
"By the way," he said, "I remember hearing something about the loss of a ring. The burglar didn't take that, did he?"
"Oh, no, sir, I remember the advertisement was in the paper before the night of the burglary."
"Brilliant police you've got!" he murmured, and took up the pen again.
"There was another burglar here and he might have taken it!" said Mary in a low voice.
The visitor once more dropped the pen and looked up with a start.
"Well, sir, this one didn't actually burgle, but--"
She thought of the master if he chanced to learn how she had been gossiping, and her sentence was cut short in the midst.
"Yes, Mary! You were saying?" cooed the persuasive visitor, and Mary succumbed again and told him of that night when a shadow moved into the trees and footprints were left in the gravel outside the library window, and the master looked so strangely in the morning. Her visitor was so interested that once she began it was really impossible to stop.