it possible for Lanyard to
examine the safe in her boudoir without exciting comment in the
household. He was nearly an hour thus engaged, but brought back to the
drawing-room, in addition to the heavy magnifying glass which he had
requisitioned to eke out his eyesight, only a face of disappointment.

"Nothing," he retorted to Eve. "Evidently a gentleman of rigidly formal
habits, our friend of last night--wouldn't dream of calling at any hour
without his gloves on.... I've been over every inch of the safe,
outside and in, and the frame of the screen too, but--nothing. However,
I've been thinking a bit as well, I hope to some purpose."

The woman nodded intently as he drew up his chair and sat down.

"You have made a plan," she stated rather than enquired.

"I won't call it that, not yet. We've got too little to go on. But one
or two things seem fairly obvious, therefore must not be left out of
consideration. Assuming for the sake of argument that Mr. Whitaker Monk
and his lot had a hand in this--"

"Ah! you think that?"

"I admit I'm unfair. But first they quarrel with my sense of the normal
by being too confoundedly picturesque, too rich and brilliant, too
sharp and smart and glib, too--well!--theatrical; like characters from
the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And
then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what
right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?"

"Leading the talk up to my jewels, you mean?"

"I mean every move they made: all too suspiciously smooth, too well
rehearsed in effect. That stop to dine in Nant with the storm coming
on, when they could easily have made Millau before it broke: what else
was that for but to stage a 'break-down' at your door at a time when it
would be reasonable to beg the shelter and hospitality of your roof?
Then Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes--whoever _she_ is--must get her feet
wet, an excellent excuse for asking to be introduced to your boudoir,
so she may change her shoes and stockings and incidentally spy out the
precise location of your safe. And when their ear is hauled into the
garage, Mr. Phinuit must go to help, which gives him a chance to stroll
at leisure through the lower part of the house and note every easy way
of breaking in. Mr. Monk casually notes your likeness to the little
girl he once met, _he_ says, in your father's office; something you
tell me you don't recall at all. And that places you as the