E HOUSE OF MYSTERIES

The sympathetic stranger almost laid down his pen, he was so interested
by this unexpected reply.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Really a burglary in this house? I say, how
awfully interesting! When did it happen?"

"Well, sir," said Mary in an impressive voice, "it's a most
extraordinary thing, but it was actually the very self same night of Sir
Reginald's murder!"

So surprised and interested was the visitor that he actually did lay
down his pen this time.

"Was it the same man, do you think?" he asked in a voice that seemed to
thrill with sympathetic excitement.

"Indeed I've sometimes wondered!" said she.

"Tell me how it happened!"

"Well, sir," said Mary, "it was on the very morning that we heard about
Sir Reginald--only before we'd heard, and I was pulling up the blinds in
the wee sitting room when I says to myself. 'There's been some one in at
this window!'"

"The wee sitting room," repeated her visitor. "Which is that?"

He seemed so genuinely interested that before she realised what
liberties she was taking in the master's house, she had led him into a
small sitting room at the end of a short passage leading out of the
hall. It had evidently been intended for a smoking room or study when
the villa was built, but was clearly never used by Mr. Rattar, for it
contained little furniture beyond bookcases. Its window looked on to the
side of the garden and not towards the drive, and a grass lawn lay
beneath it, while the room itself was obviously the most isolated, and
from a burglarious point of view the most promising, on the ground
floor.

"This is the room, sir," said Mary. "And look! You still can see the
marks on the sash."

"Yes," said the visitor thoughtfully, "they seem to have been made by a
tacketty boot."

"And forbye that, there was a wee bit mud on the floor and a tacket mark
in that!"

"Was the window shut or open?"

"Shut, sir; and the most extraordinary thing was that it was snibbed
too! That's what made the master say it couldna have been a burglar at
all, or how did he snib the window after he went out again?"

"Then Mr. Rattar didn't believe it was a burglar?"

"N--no, sir," said Mary, a little reluctantly.

"Was anything stolen?"

"No, sir; that was another funny thing. But it must have been a
burglar!"

"What about the other windows, and the doors? Were they all fastened in
the morning?"

"Yes, sir, it's the truth they were," she admitted.

"And