table there were a couple of reporters: I know them, too, well enough. Now, who, out of that lot, would be likely to steal—for that's what it comes to—this tobacco-box? A thing that had scarcely been mentioned—if at all—during the proceedings!"
"Well, I don't know," I remarked. "But you're forgetting one thing, inspector. That's—curiosity!"
He looked at me blankly—clearly, he did not understand. Neither, I saw, did Miss Raven.
"There are some people," I continued, "who have an itching—perhaps a morbid—desire to collect and possess relics, mementoes of crime and criminals. I know a man who has a cabinet filled with such things—very proud of the fact that he owns a flute which once belonged to Charles Pease; a purse that was found on Frank Muller; a reputed riding-whip of Dick Turpin's and the like. How do you know that one or other of the various men who sat round the table you're talking of hasn't some such mania and appropriated the tobacco-box as a memento of the Ravensdene Court mania?"
"I don't know," he replied. "But I don't think it likely: I know the lot of them, more or less, and I think they've all too much sense."
"All the same, the thing's gone," I remarked. "And you'll excuse me for saying it—you're a bit concerned by its disappearance."
"I am!" he said, frankly. "And I'll tell you why. It's just because no particular attention was drawn to it at the inquest. So far as I remember it was barely mentioned—if it was, it was only as one item, an insignificant one, amongst more important things; the money, the watch and chain, and so on. But—
