“The rajah is an interesting character, Watson, and probably not your first idea of an Indian nobleman. He was dressed in a tweed suit, looking every inch an English country gentleman. Apparently he was sent to England as a boy, to attend school here at Eton, which is where he first met Viscount Latchmere, twenty-odd years ago. His great interest now is the education of his fellow countrymen. He is keen to found a school along the lines of Eton in his native province, and it is this that has brought him to England on this occasion. As to the events of Saturday night, he was unable to tell me anything that might have been helpful. He retired to bed just before eleven o’clock, fell asleep almost immediately and heard nothing until a maid woke him with a cup of tea the following morning. His manner was very pleasant and open, but I got the distinct impression as we were talking that he was picking his words with care, as if there were something in his thoughts that he did not wish to put into words.

“Peter Brocklehurst is a distant cousin of Viscount Latchmere’s. Since coming down from Oxford last year, he informed me, he has been casting about for something to do, without, as yet, finding anything suitable. On Saturday evening, he informed me, he retired to bed shortly after eleven. He admits he had had rather too much to drink during the evening, and says he fell into a very deep sleep, after which he heard nothing until the next morning, when he awoke to learn that the Latchmere Pendant had been stolen. As we spoke, I sensed that he had something on his mind other than the subject of our discussion. What this might be, I could not tell, but to judge from the frequency with which he glanced out through the French window to the terrace outside, it may have had something to do with Miss Matilda Wiltshire.

“Miss Wiltshire herself is a pretty young thing, if not, perhaps, the most profound thinker. She is a first cousin to, and just a couple of years younger than, Lady Latchmere herself. They have, apparently, been friends since childhood, and she is a fairly frequent visitor to Latchmere Hall. Her father is a solicitor, with chambers in Gray’s Inn. I think she found Saturday evening dreadfully dull, as Viscount Latchmere and the rajah were, she said, discussing schools and methods of education interminably. The only thing she seemed to take away from the conversation was that the rajah prefers to be addressed by his friends as Saju. She ended the evening tired, she said, and with a slight headache, so having ascended to the upper floor in the company of Lady Latchmere, she repaired straight to her room, and five minutes later was in bed, endeavouring to get to sleep. However, possibly because of the headache, sleep would not come, and she lay awake for some time. She says she heard others come to bed, and then, a little later, heard the rajah snoring loudly, which kept her awake for a further ten minutes or so, until she eventually dropped off. She heard nothing further.

“The Honourable Miss Arabella Norman, who is a distant cousin of Viscount Latchmere’s, is an elderly lady and describes herself as ‘a relic’. She was also disturbed by the rajah’s snores on Saturday night – he was in the room immediately next to hers – which she says kept her awake ‘for hours’, although she concedes that that may be an exaggeration. She admits that as she has got older, she has become a very light sleeper and has found it increasingly difficult to sleep anywhere but in her own bed at home. She therefore makes social visits much less frequently than she did when younger. I was, in a sense, somewhat disappointed by my conversation with Miss Norman: sometimes, elderly ladies are very keen observers of all that is happening about them; but if Miss Norman had observed anything, she was keeping it to herself. She went to bed about ten minutes after the younger women, she informed me, and, apart from the rajah’s snoring, heard nothing more all night.

“As I was speaking to Miss Norman on the terrace, I saw a man in the distance, examining the ground by the side of the house. Thinking that this might be Inspector Sturridge, I took myself over there and introduced myself. My conjecture proved correct, but the welcome he afforded me was not a friendly one. Indeed, he appeared determined to take offence at my presence.

“‘I was wondering when someone of your type would show up,’ said he in a disagreeable tone, ‘now that a reward has been offered.’

“I assured him that my presence there had been specifically requested by Viscount Latchmere himself, and that I had been perfectly unaware that a reward had been offered until within the last hour. This seemed to satisfy him and, from that point on, he became decidedly more genial. He is, in fact, a very genial man, but an absolute dunderhead as a detective. He described to me what he had discovered so far, which was, in truth, practically nothing.

“‘As Lady Latchmere’s bedroom door was locked,’ he said, as we walked round the outside of the house, ‘and as the little dressing room that adjoins it can only be entered from that bedroom, it is clear that the thief must have climbed in through the open dressing-room window. It would not be very difficult for an intruder to climb up there: this part of the house is covered with ivy and other climbing plants, as you can see.’

“‘Have you found any signs of such an intruder?’ I asked as we stopped below the window in question.

“‘I cannot say in all honesty that I have,’ he replied. ‘It is this that makes me think it must be the work of some highly professional criminal gang; but the creepers are so intertwined and tangled just here that any such signs would be difficult to make out, in any case.’

“‘Any footprints?’ I asked, as I surveyed a strip of bare earth by the house wall.

“Inspector Sturridge shook his head. ‘As you can see, the ground is dry and hard just here. I had a good look round, but didn’t find anything – apart from the glove, of course.’

“‘What glove is that?’ I asked in surprise.

“‘Have they not told you? It is not of any significance, I am afraid, Mr Holmes. It is just one of Lady Latchmere’s own gloves. I found it on the ground, just here where we’re standing. The thief must have accidentally got it caught up in his clothing, I imagine, and dragged it out of the window as he was making his escape. The only other explanation I could think of for its presence here was that the thief had used it to signal to a confederate who was standing out here on the lawn, but that seems unlikely, for several reasons.’

“‘Not the least of which is that it would have been pitch black at that time of night.’

“‘Precisely. So, as I say, it is probably of no significance. The glove is lying on the chest in the entrance hall. They left it there in case I wished to see it again, but I don’t.’

“Inspector Sturridge returned to the house then, to try once more to gain an audience with Viscount Latchmere, while I, thinking that I might have missed something during my first examination, applied myself again to the search for evidence that an intruder had been there on Saturday night. Fifteen minutes later I was obliged to conclude, as I had earlier, that there was not the slightest trace on the outside of Latchmere Hall that any intruders had been there at all, let alone that one of them had climbed up the wall below Lady Latchmere’s dressing-room window. Of course, I could be wrong – I occasionally am – but I have handled perhaps seventy-odd cases in which shrubberies or creepers on the wall of a house have played some part in the matter, and I cannot recall a single one in which I have been so completely unable to detect any sign of human presence. I even attempted to climb the wall of Latchmere Hall myself, and although I am reasonably agile, and certainly not heavy, I at once broke several small stems on the creeper – damage which, if anyone else had caused it, I could not possibly have failed to observe.