Yet I knew, both from circumstances and my own instinct that no such planning had occurred.

I was a victim, not of malice but of blind chance, or shall I say of Providence?
As to this one key having been slipped from the rest and used to open the wine-vault for wine which nobody wanted and nobody drank--this must be classed with the other incongruities which might yet lead to my enlargement.
"You may add this coincidence to the other," I conceded, after I had gone thus far in my own mind.

"I swear that I had nothing to do with that key." Neither could I believe that it had been used or even carried there by Adelaide or Carmel, though I knew that the full ring of keys had been in their hands and that they had entered the building by means of one of them.

So assured was I of their innocence in this regard that the idea which afterwards assumed such proportions in all our minds had, at this moment, its first dawning in mine, as well as its first outward expression.
"Some other man than myself was thirsty that night," I firmly declared.
"We are getting on, Charles." Evidently he did not consider the pace a very fast one, but being a cheerful fellow by nature, he simply expressed his dissatisfaction by an imperceptible shrug.
"Do you know exactly what the club-house's wine-vault contained ?" he asked.
"An inventory was given me by the steward the morning we closed.

It must be in my rooms." "Your rooms have been examined.