ond
necklace belonging to the wife of a gentleman in a Connecticut town.
The facts that are given here are absolutely accurate. The gentleman in
question was a retired business man of some means who lived not far from
the town and who made frequent visits to New York City. He had made his
wife a present of a fifteen thousand-dollar diamond necklace, which she
kept in a box in a locked trunk in her bedroom. While she had owned
the necklace for over a year she had never worn it. One evening having
guests for dinner on the occasion of her wedding anniversary she decided
to put it on and wear it for the first time. That night she replaced it
in its box and enclosed this in another box, which she locked and placed
in her bureau drawer. This she also locked. The following night she
decided to replace the necklace in the trunk. She accordingly unlocked
the bureau drawer, and also the larger box, which apparently was in
exactly the same condition as when she had put it away. But the inner
box was empty and the necklace had absolutely disappeared. Now, no
one had seen the necklace for a year, and then only her husband, their
servants, and two or three old friends. No outsider could have known of
its existence. There was no evidence of the house or bureau having been
disturbed.

A New York detective agency was at once retained, which sent one of its
best men to the scene of the crime. He examined the servants, heard the
story, and reported that it must have been an inside job--that there was
no possibility of anything else. But there was nothing to implicate any
one of the servants, and there seemed no hope of getting the necklace
back. Two or three days later the husband turned up at the agency's
office in New York, and after beating about the bush for a while,
remarked:

"I want to tell you something. You have got this job wrong. There's one
fact your man didn't understand. The truth is that I'm a pretty easy
going sort, and every six months or so I take all the men and girls
employed around my house down to Coney Island and give 'em a rip-roaring
time. I make 'em my friends, and I dance with the girls and I jolly
up the men, and we are all good pals together. Sort of unconventional,
maybe, but it pays. I know--see?--that there isn't a single one of those
people who would do me a mean trick. Not one of 'em but would lend me
all the money he had. I don't care what your operator says, the person
who took that necklace came from