"Where was the key of the safe?" asked Lennard.
"In that back room; and in Mr. Brightman's deep drawer—the drawer from which the gold was taken," was my grave answer. "And she could not have got at it without—without passing him."
Lennard's face grew hot.
"And the key of that drawer was here, in my own pocket, on the bunch." I took out the bunch of keys as I spoke—Mr. Brightman's bunch until within a few days—and shook it before him.
"What mystery has come over the house, about keys, and locks, and things disappearing?" Lennard murmured, as a man bewildered.
"Lennard, it is the question I am asking myself."
"She could never have gone in there and passed him; and stood there while she got the key. A young and beautiful woman like Lady Clavering! Sir, it would be unnatural."
"No more unnatural for beauty than for ugliness, Lennard. Unnatural for most women, though, whether pretty or plain."
"But how could she have divined that the key of the safe was in that drawer, or in that room?" urged Lennard. "For the matter of that, how could she have known that the will was in the safe?"
Truly the affair presented grave perplexities. "One curious part of it is that she should have called you up with her screams, Lennard," I remarked. "If she had only that moment opened the door, and seen—what frightened her, she could not have been already in the room hunting for the key. Were the screams assumed? Was it all a piece of acting?"