"Back to what?" I demanded, as I followed him out through the canvas-lined maze again, feeling that he was in some way tricking me, resenting the foolish mystery which he was flinging about the whole foolish maneuver.
"Back to those guests of yours and some good old-fashioned common sense," was his retort.
But during the ride back to Sherry's he had nothing further to say to me. His answers to the questions I put to him were either evasive or monosyllabic. He even yawned, yawned openly and audibly, as we drew up at the carriage entrance of that munificently lighted hostelry. He now seemed nothing more than a commonplace man tired out at the completion of a commonplace task. He even seemed a trifle impatient at my delay as I waited to check my hat and coat—a formality in which he did not join me.
"Now, I can give you people just two minutes," he said, as the five of us were once more seated at the same table and he once more consulted his turnip of a watch. "And I guess that's more'n we'll need."
He turned to the wan and tired-eyed girl, who, only too plainly, had not altogether enjoyed her wait.
"You've got the necklace?" he asked.
She held up a hand from which the string of graduated pearls dangled. The man then turned to me.
"You took this string of pearls away from this man?" he asked, with a quick nod toward the jewel thief.
"I assuredly did," was my answer.
"Knowing he had taken them from this young lady earlier in the evening?"