to the owner to enter by a secret way! On the contrary such rights as the owner reserved were exactly specified."
"A man has a right to enter his own house, when and how he will; and to protect the property which is being filched from him by strangers!" He said the last words with such manifest intention of offence that I stood on guard. Evidently he wanted to anger me, as I had angered him. I determined that thenceforward I should not let anything which he might say ruffle me. I replied with deliberate exasperation:
"The law provides remedies for any wrongs done. It does not, that I know of, allow a man to enter secretly into a house that he has let to another. There is an implied contract of peaceful possession, unless entry be specified in the agreement." He answered disdainfully:
"My agent had no right to let, without protecting such a right."
"Ah, but he did; and in law we are bound by the acts of our agents. 'Facit per alium' is a maxim of law. And as to filching, let me tell you that all your property at Crom is intact. The pieces of paper that you claimed were left in the book; and the book has remained as you yourself placed it on the shelf. I have Mrs. Jack's word that it would be so." He was silent; so, as it was necessary that the facts as they existed should be spoken of between us, I went on:
"Am I to take it that you read the private papers on the table of the library during your nocturnal visit? By the way, I suppose it was nocturnal."
"It was."
"Then sir," I spoke sharply now, "who has done the filching? We—Miss Drake and I—by chance discovered those papers. As a matter of fact they were in an oaken chest which I bought at an auction in the streets of Peterhead. We suspected a cipher and worked at it till we
