"Never heard of them?" Mr. Lorburn spluttered. "Then some accomplished bibliophile must have given you a list." He looked pale and gasping, like a fish agonizing for water. "Oh, my heart—I should never have let myself to be drawn into this." Sitting down again, he closed his lids and leaned his head against the knobby carving of the armchair.

Vance was alarmed by his appearance; but he noticed that it did not affect Miss Spear. She continued to fix her anxious gaze upon himself. "Just try to remember exactly what happened." She spoke as if reassuring a child. Her voice was too kind, too compassionate; his own caught in his throat, and he felt the tears swelling.

"Of course I didn't take any books," he repeated. "And I didn't disappear—I went with Upton… ."

"Of course," she said. "But the books are gone. There's the point. Very valuable ones, unluckily."

("The most valuable," Mr. Lorburn interjected, his eyes still closed.)

"Think, Vance; when you left last Saturday night, didn't you forget to shut this window?" She pointed to the window near which she stood.

The definiteness of the question cleared Vance's mind.

"No, I didn't. I fastened all the shutters and windows before I left."

She paused, and he saw a look of uncertainty in her face. "Think again, please. On Sunday morning this one was found open, and the shutter had been unhooked from the inside. Someone must have got in after you left, and taken the books, for they're really gone. We've hunted everywhere."

Vance repeated: "I fastened all the shutters; I'm sure I did. And I locked the front door." He stopped, and then remembered that when he left the house Lorburn Spear had been with him. "Ask your brother; I guess he'll remember."

As he spoke, there came back to him the sensation he had experienced as he waited in the dusk of the hall for Lorry Spear, who had gone back to the library to find his cigarette case. He had been a long time finding it, and while Vance waited he had heard that mysterious sound somewhere in the distance: a sound like a window opening or a shutter swinging loose. He had thought of Laura Lou's childish fears, smiled them away, and nevertheless turned back to see… .

"My brother? Yes, I know he was with you," Miss Spear said, almost irritably. Her face looked expressionless, cold. "He says it was you who attended to closing the house."

"Well, doesn't he say I closed everything?"

"He says he doesn't remember." She paused, and then began, in a hasty authoritative tone: "Someone must have broken in. Someone has taken the books. Try to remember what happened when you were leaving—try again, Vance," she urged, more gently.

Mr. Lorburn still sat with closed eyes, and the gasping fishlike expression. He murmured again: "I ought not to have let myself be drawn into this—" and then was silent.