Rolfe looked startled.

“Hill says he wanted a plan of the house and to know what valuables it contained.”

Crewe smiled.

“And has it been your experience among criminals, Rolfe, that a burglar must have a plan of the place he intends to burgle, and that to get this plan he will give himself away to any man who can supply it?  A plan has its uses, but it is indispensable only when a very difficult job is being undertaken, such as breaking through a wall or a ceiling to get at a room which contains a safe.  This job was as simple as A B C. And besides, as far as I can make out, Birchill knew—­the girl Fanning must have known—­that Sir Horace would be going away some time in August and that the house would be empty.  Did he want a plan of an empty house?  He would be free to roam all over it when he had forced a window.”

“He wanted to know what valuables were there,” said Rolfe.

“And therefore took Hill into his confidence.  If Hill had told his master—­even Birchill would realise the risk of that—­there would be no valuables to get.  Next, we come to Sir Horace Fewbanks’s unexpected return.  According to Hill’s story, he made some tentative efforts to commence a confession as soon as he saw his employer, but Sir Horace was upset about something and was too impatient to listen to a word.  Is such a story reasonable or likely?  Hill says that Sir Horace had always treated him well; and according to his earlier statement, when he permitted himself to be terrorised into agreeing to this burglary, he told himself that chance would throw in his way some opportunity of informing his master.  And he told you that Birchill, mistrusting his unwilling accomplice, hurried on the date of the burglary so as to give him no such opportunity.  Well, chance throws in Hill’s way the very opportunity he has been seeking, but he is too frightened to use it because Sir Horace happens to return in an angry or impatient mood.

“Let us take Birchill’s attitude when Hill tells him that Sir Horace has unexpectedly returned from Scotland.  Birchill is suspicious that Hill has played him false, and naturally so, but Hill, instead of letting him think so, and thus preventing the burglary from taking place, does all he can to reassure him, while at the same time begging him to postpone the burglary.  That was hardly the best way to go about it.  Let us charitably assume that Hill was too frightened to let Birchill remain under the impression that he’d played him false, and let us look at Birchill’s attitude.  It is inconceivable that Birchill should have permitted himself to be reassured, when right through the negotiations between himself and Hill he showed the most marked distrust of the latter.  Yet, according to Hill, he suddenly abandons this attitude for one of trusting credulity, meekly accepting the assurance of the man he distrusts that Sir Horace Fewbanks’s unexpected return from Scotland on the very night the burglary is to be committed is not a trap to catch him, but a coincidence.  Then, after drinking himself nearly blind, he sets forth with a revolver to commit a burglary on the house of the judge who tried him, on Hill’s bare word that everything is all right.  Guileless, trusting, simple-minded Birchill!