please. If you can only find this thief and put an end to this horrible state of affairs, you'll do me the greatest service I've ever asked for—and as to your fee, I'll gladly make it whatever is usual, and three hundred in addition."
Martin Hewitt bowed. "You're very generous, Sir James, and you may be sure I'll do what I can. As a professional man, of course, a good fee always stimulates my interest, although this case of yours certainly seems interesting enough by itself."
"Most extraordinary! Don't you think so? Here are three persons, all ladies, all in my house, two even in the same room, each successively robbed of a piece of jewellery, each from a dressing-table, and a used match left behind in every case. All in the most difficult—one would say impossible—circumstances for a thief, and yet there is no clue!"
"Well, we won't say that just yet, Sir James; we must see. And we must guard against any undue predisposition to consider the robberies in a lump. Here we are at the lodge gate again. Is that your gardener
"Hewitt stood before the dressing-table."—the man who left the ladder by the lawn on the first occasion you spoke of?" Mr. Hewitt nodded in the direction of a man who was clipping a box border.
"Yes; will you ask him anything?"
"No, no; at any rate, not now. Remember the building alterations. I think, if there is no objection, I will look first at the room that the lady—Mrs.?" Hewitt looked up inquiringly.
"My sister-in-law? Mrs. Cazenove. Oh, yes, you shall come to her room at once."
"Thank you. And I think Mrs. Cazenove had better be there."
They alighted; and a boy from the lodge led the horse and dog-cart away. Mrs. Cazenove was a thin and faded, but quick and energetic, lady of middle age. She bent her head very slightly on learning Martin Hewitt's name, and said: "I must thank you, Mr. Hewitt, for your very prompt attention. I need scarcely say that any help you can afford in tracing the thief who has my property—whoever it may be—will make me most grateful. My room is quite ready for you to examine."
The room was on the second floor—the top floor at that part of the building. Some slight confusion of small articles of dress was observable in parts of the room.
"This, I take it," inquired Hewitt, "is exactly as it was at the time the brooch was missed?"
"Precisely," Mrs. Cazenove answered. "I have used another room, and put myself to some other inconveniences, to avoid any disturbance."
Hewitt stood before the dressing-table. "Then this is the used match," he observed, "exactly where it was found?"
"Yes."
"Where was the brooch?"
"I should say almost on the very same spot. Certainly no more than a very few inches away."
Hewitt examined the match closely. "It is burnt very little," he remarked. "It would
