"Do you go out much in society?"
"Arthur does. Mary and I stay at home. We neither of us care for it."
"That is unusual in a young girl."
"She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She is four-and-twenty."
"This matter, from what you say, seems to have been a shock to her also."
"Terrible! She is even more affected than I."
"You have neither of you any doubt as to your son's guilt?"
"How can we have when I saw him with my own eyes with the coronet in his hands."
"I hardly consider that a conclusive proof. Was the remainder of the coronet at all injured?"
"Yes, it was twisted."
"Do you not think, then, that he might have been trying to straighten it?"
"God bless you! You are doing what you can for him and for me.
But it is too heavy a task. What was he doing there at all? If his purpose were innocent, why did he not say so?"
"Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie?
His silence appears to me to cut both ways. There are several singular points about the case. What did the police think of the noise which awoke you from your sleep?"
"They considered that it might be caused by Arthur's closing his bedroom door."
"A likely story! As if a man bent on felony would slam his door so as to wake a household. What did they say, then, of the disappearance of these gems?"
"They are still sounding the planking and probing the furniture in the hope of finding them."
"Have they thought of looking outside the house?"
"Yes, they have shown extraordinary energy. The whole garden has already been minutely examined."
"Now, my dear sir," said Holmes. "is it not obvious to you now that this matter really strikes very much deeper than either you or the police were at first inclined to think? It appeared to you to be a simple case; to me it seems exceedingly complex. Consider what is involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came down from his bed, went, at great risk, to your dressing-room, opened your bureau, took out your coronet, broke off by main force a small portion of it, went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?"