"No more than I did or Sire."
Emily looked at the dog, who was crouched before them. He had lifted his head at the mention of his name.
"Ah, Sire, you know the solution of all this mystery, don't you? And you'd tell it if you could."
Sire barked an answer to this appeal and turned his head away, blinking, as old dogs do.
"But who could have done it, Bertha?"
"Nobody in all the world. It just happened, like the other fire before."
"Was there another fire before?" asked Emily, all eagerness.
"Two or three years ago we had a fire in the study."
"Tell me about it."
"Oh, the professor had just gone upstairs a minute and when I went in the big waste basket was blazing up."