Thaxton was the first witness.

“Mr. Vail,” asked the chief, “what did you lose? I don’t see your list on this inventory of stolen goods you’ve made out for me.”

Vail looked blank.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I never[104] thought to look. I was so bothered about the others’ losses I clean forgot—”

[104]

“Suppose you go and look now,” hinted the chief. “Be as quick as you can. We’ll delay the interrogation till you come back.”

Thaxton returned to the improvised courtroom in less than three minutes.

“Not a thing missing, so far as I can see,” he reported. “And nothing disturbed. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Chief. I seem to be the only one who escaped a visit from the thief.”

Clive Creede had been slumping low in the chair which Vail had brought him. Now, breathing hard, he got weakly to his feet and lurched through the open French window out onto the moonlit veranda.

He made his exit so unobtrusively that no one but Doris Lane chanced to note it. The girl, at sight of his haggard face and stumbling gait, followed Creede out into the moonlight. She found him leaning against one of the veranda pillars, drawing in great breaths of the cool night air.

“Are you worse?” she asked in quick anxiety. “Why don’t you go to bed? You’re not fit to be up.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” he declared, pluckily, as[105] he straightened from his crumpled posture. “Don’t worry about me. Only—the room was so close and so crowded and so noisy—and I felt dizzy—and I had to come out here for a lungful of fresh air. I’ll go back presently.”

[105]

She hesitated, as though about to return to the others. But the sick man looked so forlorn and weak she disliked to leave him alone. Yet, knowing how sensitive he was in all things regarding his health, she masked her intent under pretense of lingering for a chat.

“I wonder if it was really an ‘inside job,’” she hazarded. “If it was, of course it must have been one of the servants. And I hate to believe that. We know every 

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