"A perfectly natural thing for him to do," replied the detective. "He would guess that, if there were any valuables, they would almost certainly have been registered, and he could scarcely hope to go over the whole contents of the van."
"Admitted," I replied. "Still, does it not strike you as curious that he should have selected the night when a valuable parcel of diamonds was there?"
"Well?" asked Forrest, his attention thoroughly arrested.
"It almost seems as if he was possessed of the same information as we were," I ventured.
"According to your argument," he answered, "the pirate should be either yourself or myself, Colonel Maitland, Mr. Mannering, Mr. Winter, or his friend."
"There remains Mannering and the diamond merchant," I said thoughtfully, "and I know the latter has never driven a motor-car in his life. Besides, he is scarcely likely to have robbed himself in such an extraordinary fashion." We had seen from the papers that he had, in fact, been referring to his own firm when he had described to us the advantages of the parcel post as a means of transmitting valuables. "He may have other friends beside Winter to whom he has mentioned the matter."
"There's Mr. Mannering still to be accounted for," remarked Forrest. "No harm can be done by inquiring if he was away from home that evening. What sort of establishment does he keep?"
"Merely a couple of maids," I answered.
"In that case there should be no trouble in ascertaining whether he was out or not," he replied. "I'll see about it in the morning."
He made the inquiry accordingly, but as he confessed to me afterwards, without expecting anything to come of it. His expectations seemed to be justified in the result. The maids declared that Mannering had gone to his sitting-room after dinner, and had been there with his slippers on when they retired for the night. They had locked up the house as usual, and the doors had been fast when they came down the next morning.