"No, she couldn't!" stormed Dotty. "Dolly Fayre doesn't go around pocketing people's jewels unconsciously! She isn't a kleptomaniac, or whatever you call it! She did exactly as she says she did. She laid that earring on that table."
"Then why isn't it there now?" asked Fenn.
"Because somebody else moved it. Oh, don't ask me who. I don't KNOW who! And I don't CARE who! But Dolly put it there, and whoever took it away from there can find it! Perhaps YOU, can, Mr. Fenn!"
The secretary looked at the angry girl with an irritating smile.
"I wish I might, Miss Rose. But I've searched the room thoroughly, as you all have, too. It can't be HERE, you know."
"I'll tell you," said Alicia, eagerly, and then she described how in her home a photograph had slipped down behind the mantel and had been lost for years.
"Let us see," and Mr. Forbes went to the mantel in the room. But there was not the least mite of a crack between the shelf and the wall. Alicia's suggestion was useless.
"But," she said, "there might be that sort of a hiding-place somewhere else. Let's look all over."
The girls tried hard to find some crack or crevice in any piece of furniture, into which the trinket might have slipped, but there was none. They felt down between backs and seats of chairs, looked behind cases of treasures, moved every book and paper that lay on the tables, even turned up the edges of rugs, and peeped under.
"It doesn't make any difference how much we look," Dotty declared, "we've just got to look more,—that's all. Why, that earring is in this room, and that's all there is about that! Now, it's up to us to find it. You know, after you search all the possible places, you have to search the impossible ones."