Page:The orange-yellow diamond by Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith).djvu/194



His various listeners had heard all that the old solicitor had said, with evident interest and attention—now, one of them voiced what all the rest was thinking.

"What makes you think that, Mr. Killick?" asked the man from New Scotland Yard. "Why should Levendale and Purvis have been trapped?"

Mr. Killick—who was obviously enjoying this return to the arena in which, as some of those present well knew, he had once played a distinguished part, as a solicitor with an extensive police-court practice—twisted round on his questioner with a sly, knowing glance.

"You're a man of experience!" he answered. "Now come!—hasn't it struck you that something went before the death of old Daniel Multenius—whether that death arose from premeditated murder, or from sudden assault? Eh?—hasn't it?"

"What, then?" asked the detective dubiously. "For I can't say that it has—definitely. What do you conjecture did go before that?"

Mr. Killick thumped his stout stick on the floor.

"Robbery!" he exclaimed, triumphantly. "Robbery! The old man was robbed of something! Probably—and there's nothing in these cases like considering possibilities—he caught the thief in the act of robbing him, and