he found
it out, which was at two in the morning, and said he wanted his
emeralds; and she flew at him with a dagger. After which he knew nothing
at all till a servant came in at eight and found him lying unconscious
in her empty room that she'd just walked out of with his emeralds in her
pocket. And no one's ever laid eyes on her, or on Van Ruyne's emeralds
ever since."

"That's what Van Ruyne says," Dudley began hotly--and went on in a
different voice. "The Valenka girl never stole his emeralds! She may
have cut him across the wrist with one of those knife-things women will
use for paper cutters; I don't say she didn't. Any girl would have been
justified when a man forced his way into her bedroom--for I bet Van
Ruyne didn't let out the whole story of that, if he did let out that he
bullied her when he found her alone! And he didn't lay any stress,
either, on the fact that he was found with the cut artery in his
wrist--that was all the stabbing that ailed him--bound up as a surgeon
would have done it; or that he'd been given just enough morphine to keep
him from wriggling off his bandage and bleeding to death before anybody
came: not Van Ruyne!"

"All that doesn't explain how Valenka got away--or what became of her,"
said Macartney obstinately. "That's the mystery I began on."

I was bored stiff with the whole thing. And whether she had Van Ruyne's
emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's
disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her
clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at
Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me up
short. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in my
house. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped her
away she--deserved it!"

There was something so like honest passion in the break in his voice
that involuntarily I glanced at Paulette, to see if by any chance she
was startled at Dudley's evidently intimate knowledge of a girl none of
us had even heard him speak of--and it took every bit of Indian quiet I
owned not to stare at her so hard that Dudley and Macartney must have
noticed. She was listening, as motionless as if she were a statue. Her
lifted hand still held her pen poised over her unfinished letter; but it
was rigid, as the rest of her was rigid. Whether it was from anger,
surprise, or jealousy of Dudley, I had no idea, but she sat as if she
had be