snubbed her. "It doesn't
matter, anyhow. After all, why shouldn't he? What is it to us?"

"Well, I feel queer about it," objected Dolores Heron. "The creature may
be a hotel thief?"

"Nonsense!" fumed the man. "The girl was a child--sixteen or seventeen.
We can't mix ourselves up in such an affair. Let's mind our own
business."

"You needn't be so cross. I haven't done anything," Dolores reproached
him. They went down together, and sat side by side on a rose-coloured
brocade sofa in the immense salon generally known as the "hall." Not one
of the ladies present was handsomer than Mrs. Heron, not one had more
beautiful jewels or a more perfect dress, and all the men openly admired
her--except her own husband.

Upstairs the girl in question was making the most of every moment. The
queer little key attached to O'Reilly's watch couldn't belong to the
desk, still, there might be a box inside the desk which it would fit.
Clo searched everywhere and everything. At last, it seemed that nothing
was left to try, when suddenly she recalled a paragraph in a newspaper.
She had seen it in a Sunday Supplement. Why, yes, Miss Blackburne, the
pearl-stringer, had given her the paper that Sunday long ago at Yonkers,
to read on the journey home. The paragraph described the up-to-date
feature added to some important hotel. Small safes had been placed in
the walls of rooms for the benefit of guests, each key being different
in design from every other. Clo could not remember the name of the hotel
referred to. Perhaps it was this one. If not, the Dietz wasn't likely to
let a rival get ahead of it. The girl stared at the wall. Any one of
those panels might conceal a safe! There were lots of panels of
different sizes, painted a soft gray and edged with delicate white
mouldings. To test each would take hours (unless she had luck and hit on
the right one first) for there might be a spring hidden in the flowery
pattern of the moulding. But--it was to the left side of the room that
O'Reilly had flung his anxious glance. She would begin, and hoped to
end, her work on the left side. A few minutes spent in thinking out the
situation, however, might save many minutes by and by. About those
panels, for instance? Which were the most likely to hide a secret?

A frieze or skirting-board of gray painted wood ran round the room to a
height of three feet above the pink-carpeted floor. Above this frieze,
distributed at regular intervals, were large plaster