sort. Just tell the housekeeper we are coming in, Neale."
The Earl nodded to Mrs. Carswell as she received him and the two partners in the adjacent hall.
"This lady will remember my calling on Mr. Horbury one evening a few weeks ago," he said. "She saw me with him in that room."
"Certainly!" assented Mrs. Carswell, readily enough. "I remember your lordship calling on Mr. Horbury very well. One night after dinner—your lordship was here an hour or so."
Gabriel Chestermarke opened the door of the dining-room—an old-fashioned apartment which looked out on a garden and orchard at the rear of the house.
"Mrs. Carswell," he said, as they all went in, "has Mr. Horbury a safe in this room, or in any other room? You know what I mean."
But the housekeeper shook her head. There was no safe in the house. There was a plate-chest—there it was, standing in a recess by the sideboard; she had the key of it.
"Open that, at any rate," commanded Gabriel. "It's about as unlikely as anything could be, but we'll leave nothing undone."
There was nothing in the plate-chest but what Gabriel expected to find there. He turned again to the housekeeper.
"Is there anything in this house—cupboard, chest, trunk, anything—in which Mr. Horbury kept valuables?" he asked. "Any place in which he was in the habit of locking up papers, for instance?"
