persons who have been dining here
leave for their homes."

Violet uttered an exclamation.

"Then, Mr. Cornell," she began--

"Mr. Cornell has our utmost confidence," Roger hastened to interpose.
"But the article missing is one which he might reasonably desire
to possess and which he alone of all present had the opportunity of
securing. You can therefore see why he, with his pride--the pride off
a man not rich, engaged to marry a woman who is--should declare that
unless his innocence is established before daybreak, the doors of St.
Bartholomew will remain shut to-morrow."

"But the article lost--what is it?"

"Miss Digby will give you the particulars. She is waiting to receive
you," he added with a gesture towards a half-open door at their right.

Violet glanced that way, then cast her looks up and down the hall in
which they stood.

"Do you know that you have not told me in whose house I am? Not hers, I
know. She lives in the city."

"And you are twelve miles from Harlem. Miss Strange, you are in the Van
Broecklyn mansion, famous enough you will acknowledge. Have you never
been here before?"

"I have been by here, but I recognized nothing in the dark. What an
exciting place for an investigation!"

"And Mr. Van Broecklyn? Have you never met him?"

"Once, when a child. He frightened me then."

"And may frighten you now; though I doubt it. Time has mellowed him.
Besides, I have prepared him for what might otherwise occasion him some
astonishment. Naturally he would not look for just the sort of lady
investigator I am about to introduce to him."

She smiled. Violet Strange was a very charming young woman, as well as a
keen prober of odd mysteries.

The meeting between herself and Miss Digby was a sympathetic one. After
the first inevitable shock which the latter felt at sight of the beauty
and fashionable appearance of the mysterious little being who was to
solve her difficulties, her glance, which, under other circumstances,
might have lingered unduly upon the piquant features and exquisite
dressing of the fairy-like figure before her, passed at once to Violet's
eyes, in whose steady depths beamed an intelligence quite at odds with
the coquettish dimples which so often misled the casual observer in his
estimation of a character singularly subtle and well-poised.

As for the impression she herself made upon Violet, it was the same she
made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not