"I was fast asleep when something woke me. I couldn't think what it was. I always sleep with the lights out. I could see nothing, but I had a feeling that there was somebody in the room. There's an electric light over my bed; I tried to turn it on, but it wouldn't come. I suppose the noise I had made had been noticed. I heard someone moving quickly across the floor. I sat up in bed. 'Who's there?' I asked. The only answer was that the door was opened. I got out of bed--I'm not so young as I was, and I'm not built for rapid movement; getting out of bed takes me some time. By the time I was well planted on my feet I knew quite well that whoever had been in my room was gone. I turned on the light at the door. As I expected, the room was empty, the door was shut; and, also what I expected, my jewel-case was lying empty on the floor. I thought I had heard something fall, and that was it. Everything was taken out of it; from what I saw, not so much as a ring had been left. I was just going to ring the bell, though whether any good would come of it I doubted--I have rung an electric bell in the middle of the night for an hour at a time, and no one has paid the slightest attention--but just as I was going to do it someone went rushing past my door, and, of course, I opened it to see if it was the thief, and a gun went off somewhere downstairs, and all the other bedroom doors seemed to open at once, everyone came out of them, and there was a pretty to-do, and then they went downstairs, and I came with them. I don't know what it's all about; all I do know is that every bit of jewelry I had has been stolen."The duchess's somewhat incoherent narrative was greeted by a chorus of feminine voices:

"I've been robbed, too!"
"So have I!"
"Everything I had has been taken!"
"I've been stripped of every single thing!"

It would seem as if all the guests at Avonham had suffered from a series of mishaps. The host thrust in his word:

"By George! Do you know, Margaret, I shouldn't wonder if you had been robbed."

"Rupert!"

"That's what woke me--the feeling that someone was in the room, or, rather, had just gone out of it. I had an idea the door had just been shut. I had it so strongly that I got up and went out into the passage to see if there was anyone about. Then I heard a fine how-d'ye-do going on downstairs, and I went back into the room and switched on the light, and you woke up."

"Of course. Do you think I'm one of the Seven Sleepers? You'd have woke the dead. I asked what was the 

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