Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath--the lady being a
relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been long retired, you
know--used to be political resident in an Indian native state. Mrs. Heath
had rather a good stock of jewelry of one sort and another, about the most
valuable piece being a bracelet set with a particularly fine pearl--quite
an exceptional pearl, in fact--that had been one of a heap of presents
from the maharajah of his state when Heath left India.

"It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
feather-weight piece of native filigree work--almost too fragile to trust
on the wrist--and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size and quality
not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one evening, and
after lunch the following day, most of the men being off by
themselves--shooting, I think--my daughter, my sister (who is very often
down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
walking--fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing, and,
while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where Mrs.
Heath turned over all her treasures to show her, as women do, you know.
When my sister was at last ready, they came straight away, leaving the
things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack them up.
The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table then."

"One moment. As to the door?"

"They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the key,
as we had one or two new servants about."

"And the window?"

"That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on their
walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere) carrying
their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner-time. Mrs. Heath went
straight to her room, and--the bracelet was gone."

"Was the room disturbed?"

"Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window was
open, as I have told you."

"You called the police, of course?"

"Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He seemed a
pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the dressing-table,
within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been, was a match, which
had been lit and thrown down. Now nobody about the house had had occasion
to use a match in that room that day, and, if they had, certainly wouldn't
have thrown it on the cover of