“I know, but she did not need to speak. I heard her heart beat, if I may so express myself, and from its beatings came the conviction I have given you.”
Mr. Winchester bestowed upon me an approving smile.
“You are all I thought you,” was his comment. “Philippa’s heart did beat, and with most unwonted emotions, too. Philippa saw the person who relieved Mrs. Winchester of her jewels.”
“What!” I cried, “and you—”
He did not wait to hear the end of my remonstrance. “I say so,” he went on, “because while Mrs. Winchester was here, and before she ascended, I saw Philippa go up. She had just time to reach the head of the stairs, when the person whose step I had already detected crossing the floor above, gained the hall—”
“The hall?” I cried.
“Yes. Can it be you really allowed yourself to dream for a moment that the thief who stole this small fortune came in by the window?”
“Mr. Winchester,” said I, “when I left the police station it was with some doubt, I confess, as to whether this theft had been committed in just the way the man who brought your note said it had been. But after hearing what Mrs. Winchester had to say—”
“Mrs. Winchester’s account of this occurrence is not to be depended upon,” he broke in calmly, but determinedly. “Shall I give you a fact or two? The window which my wife declares she found open when she went up-stairs was not raised while she was down here, but after her return, for I heard it. The step which crossed the floor above us while we were talking together here, went out, not by any window, but by the door leading into the hall; so that—”