another moment the woman's voice was
again upraised.

Eleanor considered, staring about her. He had come into sight from
beneath the staircase. She reconnoitred stealthily in that direction,
and discovered a portion of the hall fenced off by a railing and
counter: evidently the erstwhile hotel office. A door stood open behind
the counter. With some slight qualms she passed into the enclosure and
then through the door.

She found herself in a small, stuffy, dark room. Its single window,
looking northwards, was closely shuttered on the outside; only a feeble
twilight filtered through the slanted slats. But there was light enough
for Eleanor to recognise the contours and masses of a flat-topped desk
with two pedestals of drawers, a revolving chair with cane seat and
back, a brown paper-pulp cuspidor of generous proportions and--a huge,
solid, antiquated iron safe: a "strong-box" of the last century's middle
decades, substantial as a rock, tremendously heavy, contemptuously
innocent of any such innovations as combination-dials, time-locks and
the like. A single keyhole, almost large enough to admit a child's hand,
and certainly calculated to admit the key in the newel-post,
demonstrated that this safe depended for the security of its contents
upon nothing more than its massive construction and unwieldy lock. It
demonstrated something more: that its owner based his confidence upon
its isolation and the loyalty of his employees, or else had satisfied
himself through practical experiment that one safe was as good as
another, ancient or modern, when subjected to the test of modern methods
of burglary.

And (Eleanor was sure) the Cadogan collar was there; unless, of course,
the man had taken it away with him; which didn't seem likely, all things
considered. A great part of the immense value of the necklace resided in
its perfection, in its integrity; as a whole it would be an exceedingly
difficult thing to dispose of until long after the furore aroused by its
disappearance had died down; broken up, its marvellously matched pearls
separated and sold one by one, it would not realise a third of its
worth.

And the girl would have known the truth in five minutes more (she was,
in fact, already moving back toward the newel-post) had not Mrs. Clover
chosen that moment to leave the kitchen and tramp noisily down the
corridor.

What her business might be in that part of the house Eleanor could not
imagine--unless it were connecte