“What did you do after you came to?” was the next question.
“I sat up and looked around. I couldn’t understand it at all. I felt sick—I couldn’t talk—something seemed to have hold of my tongue. It’s that way yet but I can feel it wearing off. I saw that I had been robbed.
“But the queer part of it was that whoever had robbed me had gone out, locked the door from the outside and then, in some way, they got the key back in here, so that it lay on the floor close to my right hand, as if it had dropped from my fingers.”
“Why, that’s easy!” chuckled Jolly Bill. “They locked the door—that is the robber did, and threw the key in over the transom. I’ve heard of cases like that.”
“There isn’t any transom over this door,” said Bob, pointing. “There isn’t a single opening to this room, either from inside the cabin or out of doors. The keyhole is the only opening, and it Is impossible to push a big key, like this, in through the keyhole.”
“I have it!” cried Ned. “They climbed up on the roof and dropped the key down the chimney. You said the chimney was barred inside, and too small for a man to climb down, Bob, but a key could fall down.”
“Yes,” admitted the young detective dryly, “a key would fall down all right, but it would drop in the fireplace, or in the ashes of the fire if one had been built Mr. Beegle says the key was lying close to his hand, and he was on the floor, ten feet away from the hearth. That won’t do, Ned.”
“Couldn’t the key bounce from the brick hearth, over to where Mr. Beegle lay?” asked the lad, who hated to see his theory riddled like this.
In answer Bob pointed to the hearth. There was a thick layer of wood ashes on it, for a fire had been burning in the place recently.
“Any key dropping in those ashes would fall as dead as a golf ball in a mud bank,” stated the young sleuth. “It wouldn’t bounce a foot, let alone ten feet, and land close beside Mr. Beegle’s hand.”