ched necklace. I
wish to goodness I'd never bought the thing!"

Her expression had changed to petulance. Ceasing to speak, she resumed
the nervous drumming of her foot upon the carpet.

Manvers took the initiative: "Mr. Staff, this is Mr. Siddons of the
customs service; this is Mr. Arnold of the United States Secret Service;
and this, Mr. Cramp of Pinkerton's. They came aboard at Quarantine."

Staff nodded to each man in turn, and reviewed their faces, finding them
one and all more or less commonplace and uninteresting.

"How-d'-you-do?" he said civilly; and to Manvers: "Well ...?"

"We were wondering if you'd seen anything of Mr. Iff this morning?"

"No--nothing. He came to bed after I'd gone to sleep last night, and was
up and out before I woke. Why?"

"He--" the purser began; but the man he had called Mr. Arnold
interrupted.

"He claimed to be a Secret Service man, didn't he?"

"He did," returned Staff. "Captain Cobb saw his credentials, I believe."

"But that didn't satisfy him," Manvers put in eagerly. "I managed to
make him understand that credentials could be forged, so he wirelessed
for information. And," the purser added triumphantly after a distinct
dramatic pause, "he got it."

"You mean Iff isn't what he claimed--?" exclaimed Staff.

Arnold nodded brusquely. "There's no such person in the service," he
affirmed.

"Then he _is_ Ismay!"

The Pinkerton man answered him: "If he is and I lay eyes on him, I can
tell in two shakes."

"By George!" cried Staff in admiration--"the clever little scamp!"

"You may well say so," said Manvers bitterly. "If you'd listened to
me--if the captain had--this wouldn't have happened."

"What--the theft?"

"Yes, that primarily; but now, you know--because he was given so much
rope--he's vanished."

"What!"

"Vanished--disappeared--gone!" said the purser, waving his hands
graphically.

"But he can't have left the ship!"

"Doesn't seem so, does it?" said the Pinkerton man morosely. "All the
same, we've made a pretty thorough search, and he can't be found."

"You see," resumed Manvers, "when the captain got word yesterday
afternoon that Iff or Ismay wasn't what he pretended to be, he simply
wirelessed back for a detective, and didn't arrest Iff, because--he
said--he couldn't get away. I told him he was wrong--and he was!"

VIII

THE WRONG BOX

When the janitor and the taxicab operator between them had worried all
his luggage upstairs, Staff pa