"True," responds Doctor Heath; "in a matter of this sort one would hardly be likely to make so fortunate a blunder, or guess."
The detective pauses a moment, and then concludes: "My reasons for saying that the robbers entered the garden by leaping the low fence just below the gate, are, first, that gate creaks loudly when opened or shut, and they knew this, and therefore avoided it; and, second, one of them, the heavier of the two, came over with sufficient force to leave the imprint of his right boot heel in the ground. It was the right heel, because the deepest side of the indentation is to the right, and he would naturally strike the ground with the weight resting on the outside of the foot; and here, my friends, as the lawyers have it, I rest my case."
"And a very clear case it looks," says Doctor Heath.
"How easily and naturally you come at these things," exclaims Constance, in admiration. "It is a, b, c, to you, but it's awful Greek to the rest of us. I begin to think detectives are born, not made."
"You think right, Miss Wardour," replies Bathurst. "It is the made detectives who spoil and disgrace our profession."
"But," says Constance, with a look of anxiety upon her face; "I am sorry to have it proved that this thing was done by some of our people. I am reluctant to institute a search that may implicate some poor man whose wife and children may live in our very town."
The detective laughs softly.
"There it is," he exclaims. "An amateur must always judge by what appears uppermost. We detectives, as a rule, always distrust the most plausible theory. Now look, a skilled burglar is a man of many resources; a burglar studies his business as I study mine. You have no idea how much misapplied talent goes roaming about of nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern. Now let us suppose this case. A professional burglar in the course of his wanderings, hears, as would be quite natural, of the immense value of the Wardour diamonds, and he desires to possess them. Now it's a great prize, and he goes to work with his utmost care. He has confederates; they come, one or all, and manage to gain the necessary information; they may come as tramps, pedlars, what not; a talkative servant, a gossiping neighbor, like Mrs. Malloy, or fragments of information picked up here and there may help them to get the 'lay of the land;' they may even have entered the house, probably have, and it may have been last month, or last year; our burglar nourishes his job and studies it carefully. Finally he is ready; he strikes; he succeeds. I do not say this is the case, understand; I simply put it as a thing possible; and quite as probable as that the thieves are here in W——."
Constance muses; she is thinking of various other depredations committed in and about W——; and, as once before she recounted them to Doctor Heath, she enumerates them now, and closes by saying:
"Your burglars keep a sharp eye on us, at all events, Mr. Bathurst."