"I suppose it did. Susan says I was upstairs a quarter of an hour, but I don't think it was so long as that. Eight o'clock struck after I got back to Mrs. Wilson's."
Mr. Butterby paused. Miss Rye resumed after a minute.
"I don't think any one could have come in legitimately without my hearing them on the stairs. My room is not at the top of the house, it is on the same floor as Mrs. Jones's; the back room immediately over the bedroom that was occupied by Mr. Ollivera. My door was open, and the drawers in which I was searching stood close to it. If any----"
"What d'ye mean by legitimate?" interrupted Mr. Butterby, turning to take a full look at the speaker.
"Openly; with the noise one usually makes in coming upstairs. But if any one crept up secretly, of course I should not have heard it. Susan persists in declaring she never lost sight of the front door at all; I don't believe her."
"Nobody does believe her," snapped Mrs. Jones, with a fling at the socks. "She confesses now that she ran in twice or thrice to look at the fires."
"Oh! she does, does she," cried Mr. Butterby. "Leaving the door open, I suppose?"
"Leaving it to take care of itself. She says she shut it; I say I know she didn't. Put it at the best, it was not fastened; and anybody might have opened it and walked in that had a mind to and robbed the house."
The visitor, sitting so unobtrusively by the fire, thought he discerned a little glimmer of possibility breaking in amidst the utter darkness.
"But, as the house was not robbed, why we must conclude nobody did come in," he observed. "As to the verdict--I don't see yet any reason for Miss Rye's disputing it. Mr. Ollivera was a favourite, I suppose."