no
resident housekeeper?"

"No," Claridge replied, "I haven't. I had one housekeeper who sometimes
pawned my property in the evening, and then another who used to break my
most valuable china, till I could never sleep or take a moment's ease at
home for fear my stock was being ruined here. So I gave up resident
housekeepers. I felt some confidence in doing it because of the policeman
who is always on duty opposite."

"Can I see the broken desk?"

Mr. Claridge led the way into the room behind the shop. The desk was
really a sort of work-table, with a lifting top and a lock. The top had
been forced roughly open by some instrument which had been pushed in below
it and used as a lever, so that the catch of the lock was torn away.
Hewitt examined the damaged parts and the marks of the lever, and then
looked out at the back window.

"There are several windows about here," he remarked, "from which it might
be possible to see into this room. Do you know any of the people who live
behind them?"

"Two or three I know," Mr. Claridge answered, "but there are two
windows--the pair almost immediately before us--belonging to a room or
office which is to let. Any stranger might get in there and watch."

"Do the roofs above any of those windows communicate in any way with
yours?"

"None of those directly opposite. Those at the left do; you may walk all
the way along the leads."

"And whose windows are they?"

Mr. Claridge hesitated. "Well," he said, "they're Mr. Woollett's, an
excellent customer of mine. But he's a gentleman, and--well, I really
think it's absurd to suspect him."

"In a case like this," Hewitt answered, "one must disregard nothing but
the impossible. Somebody--whether Mr. Woollett himself or another
person--could possibly have seen into this room from those windows, and
equally possibly could have reached this room from that one. Therefore we
must not forget Mr. Woollett. Have any of your neighbors been burgled
during the night? I mean that strangers anxious to get at your trap-door
would probably have to begin by getting into some other house close by, so
as to reach your roof."

"No," Mr. Claridge replied; "there has been nothing of that sort. It was
the first thing the police ascertained."

Hewitt examined the broken door and then made his way up the stairs with
the others. The unscrewed lock of the door of the top back-room required
little examination. In the room below the trap-door was a dusty tab