irates' cave. But Lord bless
you, it turned out as he hadn't took it there at all, as I found
out a goodish bit afterward, when her ladyship comes down to the
landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, calls me up to
give me the lint for Miss Eastman, and then gives a jump and a cry,
like she'd just recollected something, and runs back upstairs as
fast as she could fly. For when I looks down, there was the missing
string of lustres lying on the landing right where her ladyship had
been standing, and where he, little rascal, had went and hid it
from me. So I picks it up and puts it back in its place on the
chandelier just as soon as I'd taken the lint to Miss Eastman like
her ladyship told me.'

"In that, Lady Leake, lies the whole story of how it came to be
where you saw me find it. Jennifer is still under the impression
that what he picked up on that landing was nothing more than the
string of twelve cut-glass lustres joined together by links of brass
wire which is at this moment hanging among the 'treasures' in your
little son's pirates' cave."

"On the landing? Lying on the landing, do you say, Mr. Cleek?"
exclaimed her ladyship. "But heavens above, how could the necklace
ever have got there? Nobody could by any possibility have entered the
boudoir after I left it to run down to the landing with the lint.
You saw for yourself how utterly impossible such a thing as that
would be."

"To be sure," he admitted. "It was the absolute certainty that
nobody in the world could have actually forced the key to the
solution upon me. Since it was possible for only one solitary person
to have entered and left that room since Sir Mawson placed the
necklace in your charge, clearly then that person was the one who
carried it out. Therefore, there was but one conclusion, namely, that
when your ladyship left that room the Ladder of Light left it
with you: on your person, and----Gently, gently, Lady Leake; don't
get excited, I beg. I shall be able in a moment to convince you
that my reasoning upon that point was quite sound, and to back it
up with actual proof.

"If you will examine the necklace, Sir Mawson, you will see that
it has not come through this adventure uninjured; in short, that
one of the two sections of its clasp is missing, and the link that
once secured that section to the string of diamonds has parted in
the middle. Perhaps a good deal which may have seemed to you sheer
madness up to this point will be clea