Lane nodded. “It is much more than an even chance. Well, I will set about it early to-morrow morning. I will give her to-day to recover from the first effects of the shock. Now, Mr. Morrice, I have never seen the lady. I should be glad if you would show me her photographs and entrust me for a brief space with the memorandum. I expect I shall have to flourish that in her face just at the beginning.”
Three photographs were shown him, one in ordinary dress, one in evening attire, one in outdoor costume.
The detective impressed the features of the wretched woman on his retentive memory. He would recognize her in any garb. He also carried away with him the important memorandum, the loss of which the financier had treated so lightly.
Rosabelle accompanied him into the hall for a few last words.
“Up to quite recently, Mr. Lane, you have not been very frank with me,” she said. “I think now you might try to make amends, and let me know what led you to fix upon Mrs. Morrice as the guilty party.”
“Well, I could hardly explain very clearly. I began of course with a general distrust of everybody in the house, for I was sure the thief was of the household.”
“Including myself, I suppose?” suggested the girl.
“Present company always excepted,” replied the detective with a low bow. “But seriously, Miss Sheldon, well-brought-up young ladies of your tender age do not take to burglary as a general rule. Well, as I said, I suspected from the beginning it was somebody in the house. I fear I must touch upon rather delicate ground for a moment. Reasoning from my theory, Mr. Croxton might as well be the criminal as anybody else, more so because collateral evidence was certainly very strong against him.”
“You thought, in other words, his employing you through me might have been a bit of audacious bluff?”
“I reckoned it amongst the possibilities of the case,” was the frank answer. “Then came the second robbery when Mr. Croxton was no longer an inmate. This fact gave rise to fresh speculations, for I did not greatly believe in the theory of an outside confederate, although I know Mr. Morrice held to it. Then I learned that the original memorandum of the mechanism was lost; it was no longer possible to say for certain that the knowledge it contained was confined to two people, it might have been acquired by more than one other party, and, of course, from that my area of suspicion was extended. What, however, finally clinched the matter in my mind, Miss Sheldon—and this is a feather in your cap—was that conversation which you overheard and reported to me.”