trance into Baraka's locked room the second night before; the manner of his opening the box; the manner of his escape from the room, leaving all doors and windows secured behind him, need not concern Hereford, most particularly then. Everything subsequent which had been at least as puzzling to him as the method of the original robbery—now was cleared in his mind. The strange, unexpected delaying of Annis in the city after the robbery, his repeated returns to the Tonty, the starting of the fire in the suite of the Javanese the night before in order to force them to abandon it—all these circumstances pointed simply and inevitably to one almost certain conviction. The thief who had entered Baraka's room and been able to open the box at the foot of his bed and take the emerald from it and then himself escape
