much as he wanted to see. He had seen that he had been right
about the gang. By wonderful luck beginner's luck, a card-player
would have told him he had discovered a burglary on the very first
night of his detective career. The men were taking silver out of
two great chests, wrapping it in rags, and packing it in baize sacks.
The door of the room was of iron six inches thick. It was, in fact,
the strong-room, and these men had picked the lock. The tools they
had done it with lay on the floor, on a neat cloth roll, such as
wood-carvers keep their chisels in.

"Hurry up!" Gerald heard. "You needn't take all night over it."

The silver rattled slightly. "You're a rattling of them trays like
bloomin' castanets," said the gruffest voice. Gerald turned and
went away, very carefully and very quickly. And it is a most
curious thing that, though he couldn't find the way to the servants
wing when he had nothing else to think of, yet now, with his mind
full, so to speak, of silver forks and silver cups, and the question of
who might be coming after him down those twisting passages, he
went straight as an arrow to the door that led from the hall to the
place he wanted to get to.

As he went the happenings took words in his mind.

"The fortunate detective," he told himself, "having succeeded
beyond his wildest dreams, himself left the spot in search of
assistance."

But what assistance? There were, no doubt, men in the house, also
the aunt; but he could not warn them.