And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to
express an opinion on it; I'm not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I
_didn't_ know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew
in the first place was that it was _you_ who had broken into the house. It
was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of
thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the
question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again,
and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway's money. I knew enough of
your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great
theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when
you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery.
Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive
seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to
lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had
something to save--your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at
it so, it was plain that you were _suppressing_ the cameo--burking it;
since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again.
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