eimer ruby that me and Smith's in this fix about!"

"Ah, go on!" said Miss Vi Vassity, striking a match for her cigarette
against the minnow-shaped sole of her gilt boot. "Are you goin' to go
and believe that my pal Jim sneaked that and then saw you and her in
trouble for it? Do you believe that, Smithie?"

"I don't," I said, without hesitation.

Miss Million said defiantly: "Think it over! Think it over! He was
always in and out of the hotel, was that Mr. Burke. He was hobnobbing
with the Rattenheimers and one and another all day long.

"And he wanted the money. We've proof of that! And he's none too
particular about how he gets it! Why, you yourself, Vi. You know he owes
you pounds and pounds and pounds at this minute that he's 'borrowed,'
and goodness knows how he intends to pay you back!

"You know he's got the cheek of the Old Gentleman himself! And,"
concluded my young mistress, with a look of shrewdness on her face that
I imagine must have been inherited from the late Mr. Samuel Million, "if
he isn't the one who stole the ruby, WHO IS?"

A violent ring at the hall-door bell made the finish to this peroration.

I opened the door to a small, freckle-faced telegraph boy.

"For Miss Smith," he said in the pretty, up-and-down Welsh accent that
is such a rest after Cockney. I took the wire. I wondered if it was Aunt
Anastasia again.

It wasn't.

It was something very much more exciting. The wire was signed "Reginald
Brace," and it said: "I am coming down by the nine o'clock train
to-night. Jewel mystery cleared up."

Oh, how can it have been cleared up? What is the solution of the
mystery? To think that at least four and a half hours must elapse before
we know!

Really, I do think Mr. Reginald Brace might have had pity on our burning
curiosity and anxiety! I do think he might have given some hint, in this
wire of his, as to who did really steal that wretched ruby!

"Well, s'long as it's all cleared up that it wasn't us that done it,
that ought to be comfort enough to us," said my mistress
philosophically, as I was fastening her into the blush-pink tea-gown for
dinner. We've put dinner on an hour late since our visitor is coming
down so late.

"Though, mark my words, Smith," she continued, "it wouldn't surprise me
one bit if that young gentleman of yours from the bank brought down that
mute-of-a-funeral from Scotland Yard to tell Miss Davis's new shoveer
that _he_ was wanted by the police this time!"