rson to have it?"

"I was," answered Phil without hesitation. "I took it from Laura Sands
because she was being careless, and I put it on Colonel Baxter's desk
in the den."

"Have you asked Laura Sands about it?" inquired the Chief.

"Yes, and she says that Phil took it away from her."

The Chief insisted on going over the rooms again carefully, but still
the fan was not found.

"The best thing to do," said Chief Baldwin, as he saw Bet's troubled
face, "is to put a good detective on the job. And we'll find the
queen's fan, I promise you that."

"When can you find it? Before Monday? Dad may be back on Monday."

Everybody laughed. "Well Bet, that's asking a little too much, even of
the Chief, just when the fan will be found. But I give you my word, it
will be recovered."

Bet felt somewhat better after the optimistic talk with Chief Baldwin
and for that night, at least, she laid aside her worries.

But Phil was not at all reassured by Chief Baldwin's promise. He was
unhappy and despondent as he told his mother the whole story from
beginning to end.

"I'm terribly uncomfortable, because I was the last to handle it,
Mother," confided the boy. "Would anyone have imagined that such a
thing could happen?"

"Are you sure you did return it? Perhaps it is in the pocket of your
overcoat. I'm going to see," and his mother left the room.

But Phil knew the fan was not there. And that night he was disturbed
even in his dreams and woke at intervals with the feeling that all the
troubles of the universe weighed him down.

The next morning he was again with Chief Baldwin and Amos Longworth,
the detective, a tight-lipped stranger with narrow eyes, who had been
chosen to look into the matter. Together they went to the Manor and
looked over the rooms as before. Longworth examined the footprints in
the dust and in the snow outside. "That's some foot! I should think
you'd be able to trace a man by that foot. It's a whale!"

"And that's why we thought it was someone masquerading. No one in our
crowd has a foot that size."

But if Phil was nervous and depressed over what had happened up to this
time, he had reason to be still more concerned when the detective
accompanied him home and began to question him privately. Before an
hour had passed, Longworth had made him confess that he and his mother
were very poor and that he might have to leave school to work. Also
that he realized the fan was very valuable.