He looked at me for a minute, then he turned on his heel and left me. It

looked as though Max might be going to be difficult.

While I was improvising an apron out of a towel, and Anne was pinning a

sheet into a kimono, so she could take off her dinner gown and still be

proper, Dallas harked back to the robbery.

"Ann put the collar on the table there," he said. "There's no mistake

about that. I watched her do it, for I remember thinking it was the sole

reminder I had that Consolidated Traction ever went above thirty-nine."

Max was looking around the room, examining the window locks and

whistling between his teeth. He was in disgrace with every one, for by

that time it was light enough to see three reporters with cameras across

the street waiting for enough sun to snap the house, and everybody knew

that it was Max and his idiotic wager that had done it. He had made two

or three conciliatory remarks, but no one would speak to him. His antics

were so queer, however, that we were all watching him, and when he had

felt over the rug with his hands, and raised the edges, and tried to

lift out the chair seats, and had shaken out Dal's shoes (he said people

often hid things and then forgot about it), he made a proposition.

"If you will take that infernal furnace from around my neck, I'll

undertake either to find the jewels or to show up the thief," he

said quietly. And of course, with all the people in the house under

suspicion, every one had to hail the suggestion with joy, and to offer

his assistance, and Jimmy had to take Max's share of the furnace. So

they took the scullery slip downstairs to the policeman, and gave Jim

Max's share of the furnace. (Yes, I had broken the policeman to them

gently. Of course, Anne said at once that he was the thief, but they

found him tucked in and sound asleep with his back against the furnace.) "In the first place," Max said, standing importantly in the middle of

the room, "we retired between two and three--nearer three. So the

theft occurred between three and five, when Anne woke up. Was your door

locked, Dal?"

"No. The door into the hall was, but the door into the dressing room was

open, and we found the door from there into the hall open this morning."

"From three until five," Max repeated. "Was any one out of his room

during that time?"

"I was," said Tom Harbison promptly, from the foot of the bed. "I was

prowling all around somewhere about four, searching"--he glanced at

me--"for a drink of water. But as I don't know a pearl from a glass

bead, I hope you exonerate me."




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