one else concerned, and we know we are all honest. That is, we know every one but the Moselys. And they couldn’t very well have done it, could they?”

“They couldn’t have done it at all,” he said, emphatically. “I know. Because you said they were the first people in the living room, waiting for dinner. I came down nearly half an hour later. I had overslept. When I changed to dinner clothes, I left my watch and my cash on my chiffonier. They were stolen. The Moselys had been downstairs a long time. And they didn’t go up again till they went after that dog fight.[106] And then they weren’t gone two minutes before they came rushing back to tell us they’d been robbed. Not long enough for them to ransack a single unfamiliar room, to say nothing of my room and Chase’s and yours. No, we must leave the Moselys out of it.”

[106]

“Then it must be one of the servants, of course,” decided Doris.

“I wish I dared hope so,” muttered Clive, almost too low for her to catch the words.

“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise.

“I mean,” he said, wretchedly, “I mean it would be better to find out that one of them had robbed us than if— Oh, I don’t mean anything at all!” he ended, in sulky anticlimax.

She stared at him with wonder.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “We’ve just proved it couldn’t be any one but the servants, unless, of course, it was done by some professional thief who got in. And that doesn’t seem likely.”

“No,” he said, shortly. “It doesn’t. It was done from the inside. That’s proved.... Let’s talk about something else, shan’t we?”

But Doris’s curiosity was piqued by his eagerness to sheer away from the theme.

“Tell me,” she insisted.

[107]“Tell you what?” he countered, sullenly.

[107]

“Tell me whom you suspect,” returned Doris. “You suspect some one. I know you do. Who is it?”

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