ascending the
stairway. I called to her, asking if she had seen Noel. She had not. She
had been in the servants' hall--talking with the chauffeur--Noel had not
been there."

"What did you do then?"

"I rushed to his room, which is on the floor above, thinking that, if he
had taken the box, and proposed to deny the fact, he would have gone
there to secrete it."

"Would he not have been more likely to leave the house immediately since
he knew you would discover your loss at once?"

"No. He would realize that to flee would be to admit his guilt. He could
not have gone more than a few hundred feet. Capture would have been
inevitable."

"Did you find the man in the room?"

"He was just leaving it as I came up."

"What did you do then?"

"I ordered him back into the room, and questioned him sharply. He denied
all knowledge of the matter, and appeared to be deeply hurt at my
suspicions."

"Did you believe him?"

"I do not know. The matter is incomprehensible. Noel has
been in my service for eight years. I supposed him absolutely
incorruptible--absolutely honest. He also insists that after I left the
bedroom, and came into the dressing-room to be shaved, he did not leave
me, nor again enter the bedroom; in which case, he could not have
committed the theft."

"Is this true?"

"So far as I can remember, it is." He spoke in a slightly hesitating
way, and Duvall at once noticed it. "You are, then, not absolutely
sure?" he asked.

"I feel confident that Noel did not leave me, nor enter the bedroom. If
I hesitated for a moment, it arose from the fact that on one or two
occasions I have fallen asleep while being shaved, but this morning I am
quite sure that I did not do so."

"Yet you were up late last night, and awoke feeling sleepy and tired."

"Yes." The Ambassador nodded. "That is true."

"Is there any other door to the bedroom?"

"None, except that which opens into my bath. The bathroom has no
windows. It is an inside room."

"And the bedroom?"

"It has two windows, facing upon the adjoining property. There is quite
thirty feet of space between the two buildings and the windows are at
least twenty-five feet from the ground."

"What room is above?"

"A guest's chamber, unused and locked."

Duvall rose and began to stride up and down the room, chewing viciously
upon his unlighted cigar. "After you finished questioning the man, what
did you do then?"

"I searched his room thoroughly, and made him tu