“Dang the thing!” he muttered. “It gets blinder with every move. Now, who the mischief is this gentleman burglar whom Brant wants to screen, and what was he here for? By Jove! I wonder if it was young Langford? He always wears gamblers’ mourning. But what the dickens was he trying to steal?”
He turned away from the window and made another slow circuit of the room in the vague hope that he might stumble upon some overlooked clew to the puzzle. There was none, and he was about to give it up when he came to the closet at the foot of the bed.
“Does this door open into the next room?” he asked.
“No, sure; ’tis on’y the closet where Misther Brant does be keeping his clothes.”
Jarvis turned the knob and glanced at the garments hanging in an orderly row at the back of the shallow recess. “These are all Brant’s, I suppose,” he said carelessly.
“’Deed and they are, then. Whose else would they be?”
“Are these all he has?”
Mary McCarthy picked a fancied suspicion out of the meaningless question and promptly resented it.
“D’ye think annybody would be shtealing them?” she demanded. “Av coorse they are all there, barring fwhat Misther Antrim and the b’y tuk to him at the jail.”
“Boy? What boy was this?”