owever, they would be
found in Miss Carson's bedroom. Had she not been so obsessed by the idea
that Miss Carson was the burglar with whose exploits the town had been
ringing of late, Hilary might have hesitated before taking the step of
searching the room of a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, a
guest in their house. But the idea that she was doing anything
disgraceful never occurred to her. The zeal of the amateur detective was
far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She
opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was
exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in
Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious
bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging
wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than
she needed that there would have been no excuse for any one to have been
untidy.

At first it seemed to Hilary that her search here was going to be
unrewarded; the cupboards and drawers in which Margaret kept her dresses
were soon searched through and revealed nothing at all of a suspicious
nature. The two top drawers then underwent an examination, and the
orderly little piles of veils and handkerchiefs were ruthlessly tumbled
about by Hilary's eager hands. But all in vain. There was no vestige
of a proof here that Miss Carson had had a hand in the two first
burglaries as well as in the last. Feeling baffled and quite unreasonably
indignant, Hilary turned her attention next to the dressing-table. The
toilet articles on it were few and simple, and Hilary was about to turn
away, when her eyes were caught by Margaret's gold watch and chain, which
were hanging on a small velvet stand. The watch was an old-fashioned one,
with an open gold face, and the long slender chain was also of gold.
Attached to it were a watch-key and a very small steel key.

Hilary remembered that Miss Carson invariably wore the watch and chain,
so that this small key evidently fitted something that she was careful
always to keep locked up. As Hilary picked up this key the chain slid
away from it, and she saw that the spring of the swivel was broken. That
accounted, then, for the fact that Miss Carson was not wearing her watch,
as she usually did. And when she left it on the dressing-table she had
evidently forgotten that she was leaving the little key, which as a rule
she was so careful to wear, lying