"Eleven twenty-two," I repeated. "Twice eleven is twenty-two. But that isn't very enlightening."

"No," she admitted. "I thought it might be a telephone number, and I called up all the eleven twenty-twos in the city."

In spite of myself, I laughed, and after a moment she smiled in sympathy.

"We are not brilliant, certainly," I said at last. "In the first place, Miss Fleming, if I thought the thing was very serious I would not laugh—but no doubt a day or two will see everything straight. But, to go back to this eleven twenty-two—did you rouse the servants and have the house searched?"

"Yes, Annie said Carter had come back and she went to waken him, but although his door was locked inside, he did not answer. Annie and I switched on all the lights on the lower floor from the top of the stairs. Then we went down together and looked around. Every window and door was locked, but in father's study, on the first floor, two drawers of his desk were standing open. And in the library, the little compartment in my writing-table, where I keep my house money, had been broken open and the money taken."

"Nothing else was gone?"

"Nothing. The silver on the sideboard in the dining-room, plenty of valuable things in the cabinet in the drawing-room—nothing was disturbed."

"It might have been Carter," I reflected. "Did he know where you kept your house money?"

"It is possible, but I hardly think so. Besides, if he was going to steal, there were so many more valuable things in the house. My mother's jewels as well as my own were in my dressing-room, and the door was not locked."

"They were not disturbed?"

She hesitated.

"They had been disturbed," she admitted. "My grandmother left each of her children some unstrung pearls. They were a hobby with her. Aunt Jane and Aunt Letitia never had theirs strung, but my mother's were made into different things, all old-fashioned. I left them locked in a drawer in my sitting-room, where I have always kept them. The following morning the drawer was unlocked and partly open, but nothing was missing."

"All your jewelry was there?"

"All but one ring, which I rarely remove from my finger." I followed her eyes. Under her glove was the outline of a ring, a solitaire stone.

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