Of course, one knows that there are people who in a different grade of
society would be shoplifters and pickpockets. When they are restrained
by obligation or environment they become a little overkeen at bridge,
or take the wrong sables, or stuff a gold-backed brush into a muff at
a reception. You remember the ivory dressing set that Theodora Bucknell
had, fastened with fine gold chains? And the sensation it caused at the
Bucknell cotillion when Mrs. Van Zire went sweeping to her carriage with
two feet of gold chain hanging from the front of her wrap?
But Anne's pearl collar was different. In the first place, instead of
three or four hundred people, the suspicion had to be divided among ten.
And of those ten, at least eight of us were friends, and the other two
had been vouched for by the Browns and Jimmy. It was a horrible mix-up.
For the necklace was gone--there couldn't be any doubt of that--and
although, as Dallas said, it couldn't get out of the house, still, there
were plenty of places to hide the thing.
The worst of our trouble really originated with Max Reed, after all.
For it was Max who made the silly wager over the telephone, with Dick
Bagley. He bet five hundred even that one of us, at least, would break
quarantine within the next twenty-four hours, and, of course, that
settled it. Dick told it around the club as a joke, and a man who owns
a newspaper heard him and called up the paper. Then the paper called up
the health office, after setting up a flaming scare-head, "Will Money
Free Them? Board of Health versus Millionaire."
It was almost three when the house settled down--nobody had any night
clothes, although finally, through Dallas, who gave them to Anne, who
gave them to the rest, we got some things of Jimmy's--and I was still
dressed. The house was perfectly quiet, and, after listening carefully,
I went slowly down the stairs. There was a light in the hall, and
another back in the dining room, and I got along without any trouble.
But the pantry, where the stairs led down, was dark, and the wretched
swinging door would not stay open.
I caught my skirt in the door as I went through, and I had to stop to
loosen it. And in that awful minute I heard some one breathing just
beside me. I had stooped to my gown, and I turned my head without
straightening--I couldn't have raised myself to an erect posture, for
my knees were giving way under me--and just at my feet lay the still
glowing end of a match!
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. Then I said sharply: "Who's there?"
The man was so close it is a wonder I had not walked into him; his voice
was right at my ear.