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Rh without recognizing that things were in no respect as they ought to be: a hat he had left on the hall rack had been moved to another peg; a chair had been shifted six inches from its ordained position; and the door of a clothes-press, which he had locked on leaving, now stood ajar.

Furthermore, the state of the salon, which he had furnished as a lounge and study, and of the tiny dining-room and the bed-chamber adjoining, bore out these testimonies to the fact that alien hands had thoroughly ransacked the apartment, leaving no square inch unscrutinized.

Yet the proprietor missed nothing. His rooms were a private gallery of valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare books, manuscripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, was by no means superficial.

Before checking off more elaborately his mental inventory, Lanyard turned attention to the protective device, a simple but exhaustive system of burglar-alarm wiring so contrived that any attempt to enter the apartment save by means of a key which fitted both doors and of which no duplicate existed would alarm both the concierge and the burglar protective society. Though it seemed to have been in no way tampered with, to test the apparatus he opened a window on the court.