"
"From your house?"
"From my office, in Chancery Lane, this morning. The four sets of drawings
were distributed thus: Two were at the Admiralty Office, one being a
finished set on thick paper, and the other a set of tracings therefrom;
and the other two were at my own office, one being a penciled set,
uncolored--a sort of finished draft, you understand--and the other a set
of tracings similar to those at the Admiralty. It is this last set that
has gone. The two sets were kept together in one drawer in my room. Both
were there at ten this morning; of that I am sure, for I had to go to that
very drawer for something else when I first arrived. But at twelve the
tracings had vanished."
"You suspect somebody, probably?"
"I can not. It is a most extraordinary thing. Nobody has left the office
(except myself, and then only to come to you) since ten this morning, and
there has been no visitor. And yet the drawings are gone!"
"But have you searched the place?"
"Of course I have! It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss,
and I have been turning the place upside down ever since--I and my
assistants.
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