What does it strike you is the inference ?" "That the somebody--or the something--was in the house already," I answered, smiling in spite of myself.
"That's just what I think," he said, with a manifest sigh of relief.
"Very well! Who can be that someone ?" "'Someone, or something,' was what I said," I answered.
"Let us make it 'someone,' Mr.Ross! That cat, though he might have scratched or bit, never pulled the old gentleman out of bed, and tried to get the bangle with the key off his arm.

Such things are all very well in books where your amateur detectives, who know everything before it's done, can fit them into theories; but in Scotland Yard, where the men aren't all idiots either, we generally find that when crime is done, or attempted, it's people, not things, that are at the bottom of it." "Then make it 'people' by all means, Sergeant." "We were speaking of 'someone,' sir." "Quite right.

Someone, be it!" "Did it ever strike you, sir, that on each of the three separate occasions where outrage was effected, or attempted, there was one person who was the first to be present and to give the alarm ?" "Let me see! Miss Trelawny, I believe, gave the alarm on the first occasion.

I was present myself, if fast asleep, on the second; and so was Nurse Kennedy.

When I woke there were several people in the room; you were one of them.