"I always put it back in the case. I haven't looked anywhere else."
"Good Heavens, then do so at once! Where's the ayah, what has she got to say?"
"She doesn't know any more than I do what has happened to it. I suppose I ought to have kept the box locked."
"And if you had you'd have left the key lying about. You're so infernally careless."
Robert raved and stormed, while Stella and Champa ransacked drawers and wardrobes without result. The necklace was not forthcoming. Dinner was postponed, every servant in the establishment was called up, and the whole staff was threatened with dismissal, imprisonment, punishment, unless the pearls were produced.
CHAPTER XIII
The disappearance of the pearls caused general commotion throughout the Commissioner's establishment. Perforce the police were called in to make investigations, and Mr. Piggott being absent from the station on duty, the chief native subordinate took command of the compound and set up a species of martial law. The servants, in terror of secret extortion under threat of false proof or suspicion, seemed to lose their wits, and either blundered idiotically over their duties or forgot them altogether. Champa collapsed, distraught with agitation, and refused to stir from her quarters.
Robert talked of little else but the loss.