Nowhere was there a letter, no significant writing nor any other name.
Herrick never knew what instinct took him back to the closet under the stairs. He could not bear to leave it; there was a little broken glass on the floor and a sudden wavering in his lamp suggested that this came from a break in one of the minute panes in a small window over head. He tried to reach this window to see if it were fastened and found it nailed down, with outside shutters that were closed. But in getting near enough for this he knocked over one of the flower-pots. "Find anything?" Stanley cried, bounding forward.
The smashed flower-pot lay at their feet. "No, only broken something!" Herrick instinctively picked it up and the loosened earth parted in his hand. "Yes, after all," he said, "I think I have." There had been buried, smooth and deep in the flower-pot, the diamond necklace.