Quimby seemed to note the presence of this offstage chorus at the same time as did Doris. For he turned to the housekeeper who stood primly in a far corner:
“You can send them back to the kitchen quarters, Mrs. Horoson,” he said. “I’m through with them for the present. Only see none of them leave the house. Let them understand that any one who tries to sneak out will be followed and arrested. I shall take it as an indication of guilt. That is all, Mrs. Horoson. We shan’t need you or Vogel any more either. Or if we do I’ll ring for you.”
“Where is Clive?” Osmun asked Willis Chase, who had greeted the unpopular twin’s advent with the briefest of nods.
“Gone up to bed,” answered Chase. “Went up as soon as the chief had finished asking him a handful of questions. Said he felt rotten. Looked it, too. Chief excused him. He has the two East rooms, if you want to go up and see him.”
“I shall, presently,” said Osmun. “This is too interesting to leave just yet.”
He listened to the chief’s few queries of Doris as to the discovery that her jewel box had been stolen. Doris replied clearly and to the point, her testimony confirming in all details the story her aunt had just told.
The last witness being examined, the lanky chief leaned back in his chair beating a tattoo on his teeth with the pencil he carried. Then he glanced at his notes and again at the inventory on the table before him.
“I am convinced,” he said slowly, “that all you people have told me the truth. And I am inclined to believe the servants have done the same. Taking into consideration their flurry and scare, they told remarkably straight stories, and it seems clear that none of them were absent from their duties in the kitchen or in the dining room long enough to have run upstairs and robbed so many rooms and then to have gotten back unnoticed. It seems none of them had even gone up so early to arrange the bedrooms for the night. And there is positively no sign, outdoors or in, that any professional thief broke into the house. Of course, a closer search of the rooms and a search of the servants and of their quarters—and of yourselves, if you will permit—may throw new light on the case. But—”
He paused. On these summer people and on others of their clan depended ninety per cent of Aura’s livelihood and importance. Quimby had tried, therefore, to handle this delicate matter in such a way as to avoid offense. And, thus far, he had not a ghost of a clue to go on.
“Search away—as far as I’m concerned,” spoke up Willis Chase, in the short pause which followed. “Three times, on the Canadian border, I’ve had my car searched for bootleg booze. And every time I hit the New York Customs crowd, on my way back from Europe, they search my soiled collars and trunkbottoms with the most loving care. So this’ll be no novelty. Search.”