“Why, he is the most talkative man I know. I have met him at Newmarket several times—a bright amusing fellow enough, but the last man to whom I should tell anything I did not wish to have repeated for the amusement of the next person he met.”
“Oh, but he would not repeat a thing like that!” said I earnestly. “He scolded me for telling him, and said such confidences should never be repeated, no matter to whom.”
“That’s all right,” said he, much relieved. “Then I shall tell Mrs. Cunningham you didn’t mention it to any one. The poor woman is half out of her mind; it was she who sent me over here to-day, to find out whether you had spoken about it in the presence of any one who could use the knowledge. For my part, I thought it very likely she had only imagined she had spoken to you about it; but I wanted an excuse for coming; so I gained my object, and put her under an obligation at the same time.”
I did not pay any attention to the implied flattery in these words; I was too much interested in the robbery.
“And is no one suspected?” I asked, with trembling lips.
“At present we know nothing, and we suspect a different person every minute. The robbery had been so well arranged, and was carried out with such discrimination—for nothing but the best of everything was taken—that at first the servants were suspected of complicity. But my man Gordon, who has no end of sense, suggested that it was only fair to them all to have their boxes examined at once. This was done, but no trace of anything was found. Of course that does not prove that they may not have given information to the thieves, whoever they were. There has been a gang of navvies at work on the railway close by for the past fortnight, and a hat belonging to one of them was found in the garden, and has been identified already; but it seems that the friends of the man it belongs to can prove that he passed the night drunk in the village. So at present we know absolutely nothing. Gordon told me privately that he doesn’t believe either the servants or the navvies have had anything to do with it, and he pointed out the resemblance between this and a robbery which took place some time ago at the house of another of my friends, Lord Dalston, whom I had been staying with not long before. He believes that it is the work of a regular jewel-robber, and that very likely he got a discharged servant to supply him with information. I pointed out to him that no servant who had long left could have given him such precise details as he seems to have had concerning the jewels of the ladies who were only visiting there, for instance. But I could not convince him. As for Mrs. Cunningham’s, that really seems marvellous, because she is a cautious sort of woman. I suppose her maid somehow found out the secret, and then told it to—Heaven knows whom.”
“I suppose so,” said I mechanically.
I was trying to put together what I had just heard and what I had already known. Mr. Carruthers rose.
“I need not trouble Mrs. Rayner at all now that I have seen you,” said he.
“Mrs. Rayner!” I repeated, in the same mechanical stupid way.