pose he had not had enough sleep--no
one had. But he came over while the lottery was going on and stood over
me and demanded unpleasantly, in a whisper, that I stop masquerading as
another man's wife and generally making a fool of myself--which is the
way he put it. And I knew in my heart that he was right, and I hated him
for it.

"Why don't you go and tell him--them?" I asked nastily. No one was
paying any attention to us. "Tell them that, to be obliging, I have
nearly drowned in a sea of lies; tell them that I am not only not
married, but that I never intend to marry; tell them that we are a lot
of idiots with nothing better to do than to trifle with strangers within
our gates, people who build--I mean, people that are worth two to our
one! Run and tell them."

He looked at me for a minute, then he turned on his heel and left me. It
looked as though Max might be going to be difficult.

While I was improvising an apron out of a towel, and Anne was pinning a
sheet into a kimono, so she could take off her dinner gown and still be
proper, Dallas harked back to the robbery.

"Ann put the collar on the table there," he said. "There's no mistake
about that. I watched her do it, for I remember thinking it was the sole
reminder I had that Consolidated Traction ever went above thirty-nine."

Max was looking around the room, examining the window locks and
whistling between his teeth. He was in disgrace with every one, for by
that time it was light enough to see three reporters with cameras across
the street waiting for enough sun to snap the house, and everybody knew
that it was Max and his idiotic wager that had done it. He had made two
or three conciliatory remarks, but no one would speak to him. His antics
were so queer, however, that we were all watching him, and when he had
felt over the rug with his hands, and raised the edges, and tried to
lift out the chair seats, and had shaken out Dal's shoes (he said people
often hid things and then forgot about it), he made a proposition.

"If you will take that infernal furnace from around my neck, I'll
undertake either to find the jewels or to show up the thief," he
said quietly. And of course, with all the people in the house under
suspicion, every one had to hail the suggestion with joy, and to offer
his assistance, and Jimmy had to take Max's share of the furnace. So
they took the scullery slip downstairs to the policeman, and gave Jim
Max's share of the furnace. (Yes, I