alk with old Jennifer, and
a very satisfactory visit to Master Bevis Leake's interesting
'pirates' cave' and----Gently, gently, Sir Mawson; gently, all
of you. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly. No, your ladyship, I
did not find the necklace in that cave, and for the simple reason
that it is not and never has been there--in short, neither your son
Bevis nor the servant, Jennifer, has the least idea in the world
_where_ it is. I have, however, and if in return for handing it over
to him, Sir Mawson will give me his promise to take that boy, Henry,
back and give him another chance, he shall have it in his hands ten
seconds afterward."

"I promise! I promise! I promise!" broke in Sir Mawson, almost
shouting in his excitement. "I give you my word, Mr. Cleek, I give
you my solemn oath."

"Right you are," said Cleek in reply. Then he twitched forward a
chair, stepped on the seat of it, reached up into the midst of the
chandelier's glittering cut-glass lustres, snapped something out from
their sparkling festoons, and added serenely, "Favour for favour:
there you are, then!" as he dropped the Ladder of Light into Sir
Mawson's hands.

And all in a moment, what with Lady Leake laughing and crying at one
and the same time, her liege lord acting pretty much as if he had
suddenly gone off his head, and Mr. Maverick Narkom chiming in and
asserting several times over that he'd be jiggered, there was the
dickens and all to pay in the way of excitement.

"Up in the chandelier!" exclaimed Lady Leake when matters had settled
down a bit. "Up there, where it might have remained unnoticed for
months, so like is it to the strings of lustres. But how? But when?
Oh, Mr. Cleek, who in the world put it there? And why?"

"Jennifer," he made answer. "No, not for any evil purpose, your
ladyship. He doesn't know even yet that it was there, or that he
ever in all his life held a thing so valuable in his hands. All that
he does know in connection with it is that while he was cleaning
those lustres out there in the hallway yesterday afternoon between
four and five o'clock your son Bevis, out on one of his 'treasure
raids,' paid him a visit, and that long after, when the old fellow
came to replace the lustres on the chandelier, he discovered that
one string was missing.

"'I knowed the precious little rascal had took it, sir, of course,'
was the way he put it in explaining the matter to me; 'and I felt
sure I'd be certain to find it in his p