“Is it?” snarled Batchgrew.  “Look here, miss, and you, young Fores, I didn’t make much o’ this this morning, because I thought th’ money ’ud happen be found.  But seeing as it isn’t, and as we’re talking about it, what time was the rumpus last night?”

“What time?” Rachel muttered.  “What time was it, Mr. Fores?”

“I dun’no’,” said Louis.  “Perhaps the doctor would know.”

“Oh!” said Rachel, “Mrs. Tams said the hall clock had stopped; that must have been when Mrs. Maldon knocked up against it.”

She went to the parlour door and opened it, displaying the hall clock, which showed twenty-five minutes past twelve.  Louis had crept up behind Mr. Batchgrew, who in his inapposite white waistcoat stood between the two lovers, stertorous with vague anathema.

“So that was the time,” said he.  “And th’ burglars must ha’ been and gone afore that.  A likely thing burglars coming at twelve o’clock at night, isn’t it?  And I’ll tell ye summat else.  Them burglars was copped last night at Knype at eleven o’clock when th’ pubs closed, if ye want to know—­the whole gang of three on ’em.”

“Then what about that burglary last night down the Lane?” Rachel asked sharply.

“Oh!” exclaimed Louis.  “Was there a burglary down the Lane last night?  I didn’t know that.”

“No, there wasn’t,” said Batchgrew ruthlessly.  “That burglary was a practical joke, and it’s all over the town.  Denry Machin had a hand in that affair, and by now I dare say he wishes he hadn’t.”

“Still, Mr. Batchgrew,” Louis argued superiorly, with the philosophic impartiality of a man well accustomed to the calm unravelling of crime, “there may be other burglars in the land beside just those three.”  He would not willingly allow the theory of burglars to crumble.  Its attractiveness increased every moment.

“There may and there mayn’t, young Fores,” said Thomas Batchgrew.  “Did you hear anything of ’em?”

“No, I didn’t,” Louis replied restively.

“And yet you ought to have been listening out for ’em.”

“Why ought I to have been listening out for them?”

“Knowing there was all that money in th’ house.”

“Mr. Fores didn’t know,” said Rachel.

Louis felt himself unjustly smirched.

“It’s scarcely an hour ago,” said he, “that I heard about this money for the first time.”  And he felt as innocent and aggrieved as he looked.

Mr. Batchgrew smacked his lips loudly.

“Then,” he announced, “I’m going down to th’ police-station, to put it i’ Snow’s hands.”

Rachel straightened herself.

“But surely not without telling Mrs. Maldon?”

Mr. Batchgrew fingered his immense whiskers.

“Is she better?” he inquired threateningly.  This was his first sign of interest in Mrs. Maldon’s condition.

“Oh, yes; much.  She’s going on very well.  The doctor’s just been.”