ce.

"Don't you think it particularly strange," I remarked, "that in holding
up the Brighton Mail, our friend at once searched for the registered
parcels, and directly he laid his hands upon them at once made off?"

"A perfectly natural thing for him to do," replied the detective. "He
would guess that, if there were any valuables, they would almost
certainly have been registered, and he could scarcely hope to go over
the whole contents of the van."

"Admitted," I replied. "Still, does it not strike you as curious that he
should have selected the night when a valuable parcel of diamonds was
there?"

"Well?" asked Forrest, his attention thoroughly arrested.

"It almost seems as if he was possessed of the same information as we
were," I ventured.

"According to your argument," he answered, "the pirate should be either
yourself or myself, Colonel Maitland, Mr. Mannering, Mr. Winter, or his
friend."

"There remains Mannering and the diamond merchant," I said thoughtfully,
"and I know the latter has never driven a motor-car in his life.
Besides, he is scarcely likely to have robbed himself in such an
extraordinary fashion." We had seen from the papers that he had, in
fact, been referring to his own firm when he had described to us the
advantages of the parcel post as a means of transmitting valuables. "He
may have other friends beside Winter to whom he has mentioned the
matter."

"There's Mr. Mannering still to be accounted for," remarked Forrest.
"No harm can be done by inquiring if he was away from home that evening.
What sort of establishment does he keep?"

"Merely a couple of maids," I answered.

"In that case there should be no trouble in ascertaining whether he was
out or not," he replied. "I'll see about it in the morning."

He made the inquiry accordingly, but as he confessed to me afterwards,
without expecting anything to come of it. His expectations seemed to be
justified in the result. The maids declared that Mannering had gone to
his sitting-room after dinner, and had been there with his slippers on
when they retired for the night. They had locked up the house as usual,
and the doors had been fast when they came down the next morning.

This investigation, perfunctory as it was, decided us against any idea
of Mannering's complicity, and I fell back upon the theory that the
diamond merchant must have communicated his methods to some one else. We
sought him out in the city, and he assured us that he h