“I think we’ll shut the door, Mold. We’d better conduct the rest of this business in private.”
The keeper closed the door of the museum, much to the disappointment of the group of people who had clustered about the entrance and were watching the proceedings with interest.
“Now, Joan, would you mind going round the wall-cases and seeing if anything has been taken from them?”
Joan obediently paced round the room and soon came back to report that nothing seemed to have been removed.
“All the cases were locked, you know,” she explained. “And there’s no glass broken in any of them. So far as I can see, nothing’s missing from the shelves.”
“What about that safe let into the wall over yonder?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“It’s used to house one or two extra valuable things from time to time,” Joan explained. “But to-night everything was put on show, and the safe’s empty.”
She went over and swung the door open, showing the vacant shelves within.
“We do take precautions usually,” she pointed out. “The museum door itself is iron-plated and has a special lock. It was only to-night that we had everything out in the show-cases.”
Sir Clinton refrained from comment, as he knew the girl was still blaming herself for her share in the catastrophe. He turned to examine the rifled section of the central case.