"This chair and table were found as they are now, I take it?" Hewitt
asked.
"Yes," said Mr. Claridge; "the thieves, I should think, dropped in through
the trap-door, after breaking it open, and had to place this chair where
it is to be able to climb back."
Hewitt scrambled up through the trap-way and examined it from the top. The
door was hung on long external barn-door hinges, and had been forced open
in a similar manner to that practiced on the desk. A jimmy had been pushed
between the frame and the door near the bolt, and the door had been pried
open, the bolt being torn away from the screws in the operation.
Presently Inspector Plummer, having finished his docket, climbed up to the
roof after Hewitt, and the two together went to the spot, close under a
chimney-stack on the next roof but one, where the case had been found.
Plummer produced the case, which he had in his coat-tail pocket, for
Hewitt's inspection.
"I don't see anything particular about it; do you?" he said. "It shows us
the way they went, though, being found just here."
"Well, yes," Hewitt said; "if we kept on in this direction, we should be
going toward Mr.
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