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."