"Are you quite sure that the seals are intact?" Mark asked.
"If you had asked me that question half an hour ago, I should have said most assuredly so, sir," Field replied. "I looked carefully to see. We always do. How on earth a body could have been spirited away like this with people about till late, to say nothing of the night watchman going his rounds, and the night porter
down below—but we need not go into that yet. My seals appeared to be in perfect order."
"But that really could not have been the fact," Mark persisted. "I fancy we can dispense with the idea that Sir Charles was removed by spiritual agency. Now, would it not have been possible for anyone to have taken an impression of the seals?"
"Just possible," Field admitted. "But what would have been the use of——"
"A great deal of use, it seems to me," Mark went on. "But I will come to that presently. Let us take one thing at a time. For some reason or other, those scoundrels have found it imperatively necessary to spirit away the body of Sir Charles. Perhaps they are afraid of the result of a post-mortem. That is another point we need not bother about for the present. Did you give any orders to the watchman here to keep an eye on that door?"
"Well, I did," Field admitted. "I particularly mentioned the seals, in case any very zealous housemaid, imagining that somebody had been disfiguring the doors, should remove them."
"Then if the seals had been broken, the night watchman would have noticed it?"
"I should say that such a thing was highly possible," Field admitted with an admiring glance in the direction of his questioner. "Really, sir, you would make an admirable detective. You mean that the scoundrels might require some little time in the next room and that any interruption——"
"Precisely," Mark proceeded. "Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that these men were staying in the hotel last night. Where so many people come and go,