Every one was nasty the next morning. Aunt Selina declared that her

feet were frost-bitten and kept Bella rubbing them with ice water all

morning. And Jim was impossible. He refused to speak to any of us and he

watched Bella furtively, as if he suspected her of trying to get him out

of the house.

When luncheon time came around and he had shown no indication of going

to the telephone and ordering it, we had a conclave, and Max was chosen

to remind him of the hour. Jim was shut in the studio, and we waited

together in the hall while Max went up. When he came down he was

somewhat ruffled.

"He wouldn't open the door," he reported, "and when I told him it was

meal time, he said he wasn't hungry, and he didn't give a whoop about

the rest of us. He had asked us here to dinner; he hadn't proposed to

adopt us."

So we finally ordered luncheon ourselves, and about two o'clock Jim came

downstairs sheepishly, and ate what was left. Anne declared that Bella

had been scolding him in the upper hall, but I doubted it. She was never

seen to speak to him unnecessarily.

The excitement of the escape over, Mr. Harbison and I remained on terms

of armed neutrality. And Max still hunted for Anne's pearls, using them,

the men declared, as a good excuse to avoid tinkering with the furnace

or repairing the dumb waiter, which took the queerest notions, and

stopped once, half-way up from the kitchen, for an hour, with the dinner

on it. Anyhow, Max was searching the house systematically, armed with

a copy of Poe's Purloined Letter and Gaboriau's Monsieur LeCoq. He went

through the seats of the chairs with hatpins, tore up the beds, and

lifted rugs, until the house was in a state of confusion. And the next

day, the fourth, he found something--not much, but it was curious. He

had been in the studio, poking around behind the dusty pictures, with

Jimmy expostulating every time he moved anything and the rest standing

around watching him.

Max was strutting.

"We get it by elimination," he said importantly. "The pearls being

nowhere else in the house, they must be here in the studio. Three parts

of the studio having yielded nothing, they must be in the fourth. Ladies

and gentlemen, let me have your attention for one moment. I tap this

canvas with my wand--there is nothing up my sleeve. Then I prepare

to move the canvas--so. And I put my hand in the pocket of this

disreputable velvet coat, so. Behold!"

Then he gave a low exclamation and looked at something he held in his

hand. Every one stepped forward, and on his palm was the small diamond

clasp from Anne's collar!

Jimmy was apoplectic. He tried to smile, but no one else did.




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