These traces were so many and so confused that I left them for Stevens' experienced eye and deft manipulation to separate and make plain to us.

He is making an examination of them now, and will be able to report to you before night." The Inspector was a man of little pretense.

He felt startled and showed it.
"But this is a serious matter, Gryce." "Very serious." "No mere visitor to the museum would have presumed upon this venture." "No." "Which means----" "That some one actively connected with it had a guilty hand in this deplorable affair." "I am afraid so." "Some one well acquainted with the existence of this door and who had means of opening it.

The question is--who ?" In saying this, Mr.Gryce studiously avoided the Inspector's eye; while the Inspector in his turn looked up, then down--anywhere but in the detective's direction.

It was a moment of mutual embarrassment, broken, when it was broken, by a remark which manifestly avoided the issue.
"Possibly those traces you speak of were not made at the time you specify.