"When the master called me in after you, I followed you in through that door," he began, pointing to the door of communication between the two rooms. "But I left it by the other, the passage door, chancing to be nearest to it at the moment. As I went out, I saw the green baize door swinging, and supposed that someone had come in; MacEveril, perhaps, from his tea. But he had not done so. I found neither him nor anyone else; the room here was vacant as when I left it."
The green baize door stood in the passage, between the street door, always open in the daytime, and the door that led into the front office.
"Seeing no one here, I concluded I was mistaken; and I have never thought of it from that hour to this," continued the clerk. "No, not even when it came out that a letter had been lost with a bank-note in it."
Tom nodded his head several times, as much as to say that was when the thief must have come in. "And now, Hanborough, I'll tell you something in turn," he went on. "Dale put the letters into my hand that afternoon, as you know; and I laid them on your desk here while showing you that clause in the mortgage deed. Later, when I took up the letters to carry them to Mr. Paul, an idea struck me that the packet felt thinner. It did indeed. I of course supposed it to be only fancy, and let it slip from my mind. I have never thought of it since--as you say by the green door--until this afternoon."
Michael Hanborough, who had put his spectacles on again, turned them upon his young master, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"Who is it that--that we may suspect, sir?"
"It looks like it," replied Tom, in the same low tone. "But while there are reasons for suspecting him, there are also reasons against it," he added, after a pause. "MacEveril was in debt, petty little odds and ends of things which he owes about the place and elsewhere; that's one reason why money would be useful to him. Then his running away looks suspicious; and another reason is that there's positively no one else to suspect. All that seems to tell against him; but on the other hand, MacEveril, though random and heedless, is a gentleman and has a gentleman's instincts, and I do _not_ think he would be guilty of such a thing."