d the small side door as usual. His assistant, Mr.
Cutler, had left an hour and a half earlier. When Mr. Claridge left,
everything was in order, and the policeman on fixed-point duty just
opposite, who bade Mr. Claridge good-evening as he left, saw nothing
suspicious during the rest of his term of duty, nor did his successors at
the point throughout the night.

In the morning, however, Mr. Cutler, the assistant, who arrived first,
soon after nine o'clock, at once perceived that something unlooked-for had
happened. The door, of which he had a key, was still fastened, and had not
been touched; but in the room behind the shop Mr. Claridge's private desk
had been broken open, and the contents turned out in confusion. The door
leading on to the staircase had also been forced. Proceeding up the
stairs, Mr. Cutler found another door open, leading from the top landing
to a small room; this door had been opened by the simple expedient of
unscrewing and taking off the lock, which had been on the inside. In the
ceiling of this room was a trap-door, and this was six or eight inches
open, the edge resting on the half-wrenched-off bolt, which had been torn
away when the trap was levered open from the outside.

Plainly, then, this was the path of the thief or thieves. Entrance had
been made through the trap-door, two more doors had been opened, and then
the desk had been ransacked. Mr. Cutler afterward explained that at this
time he had no precise idea what had been stolen, and did not know where
the cameo had been left on the previous evening. Mr. Claridge had himself
undertaken the cleaning, and had been engaged on it, the assistant said,
when he left.

There was no doubt, however, after Mr. Claridge's arrival at ten
o'clock--the cameo was gone. Mr. Claridge, utterly confounded at his loss,
explained incoherently, and with curses on his own carelessness, that he
had locked the precious article in his desk on relinquishing work on it
the previous evening, feeling rather tired, and not taking the trouble to
carry it as far as the safe in another part of the house.

The police were sent for at once, of course, and every investigation made,
Mr. Claridge offering a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of
the cameo. The affair was scribbled off at large in the earliest editions
of the evening papers, and by noon all the world was aware of the
extraordinary theft of the Stanway Cameo, and many people were discussing
the probab