"Well, no, I can't be sure," said Holmes, knocking the ashes off his cigar, "but it could have so happened, very easily. I was talking earnestly all the way home from the store, where we stopped coming back from stables, you remember, and I'm getting absent-minded at times. Besides, how else could it have gone, supposing it to have been in the pocket of the overcoat when I hung it in the hall just before dressing for dinner? You have had Robert years."
"He has been with me over seven years, and came to me with a high character from the old First Artillery. I never heard of his being even suspected of dishonesty."
"He is the only man who has been in the hall to-night. No one could have come in from the front while we were at dinner."
"No one without our knowledge. The door has a queer sort of latch or lock. Sometimes in high winds it would let go and blow open, but some servant who had lived here before we came put Robert up to a way of catching it that proved very effective. No; nobody was in the hall except McLean, and of course that is out of the question. Besides, he had not time. He was only there half a minute or so."
Mr. Holmes bowed without speaking. He remembered perfectly, however, that it was nearer five minutes that Mr. McLean had to wait there while the doctor was finishing that confounded story. Nevertheless, as the doctor said, that was out of the question.
"Oh, no!" he broke in hurriedly, "I cannot think any one here could have taken it. It will turn up somewhere among my other traps to-night, or else I've dropped it. Don't think of it, doctor; that distresses me far worse than the loss. Suppose we turn in now, and I'll look around my room once more."
Half an hour later the doctor tapped softly at his guest's door.
"Found it?" he asked.
"No, not yet; going to bed," was the answer, accompanied by an ostentatious yawn. "Good-night, doctor."
Mr. Holmes had indeed found no pocket-book. The discovery he made was far less welcome. An amethyst pin with sleeve-buttons to match, a piece of personal property that he highly valued, had disappeared from his dressing-case. There were three pairs of sleepless eyes in the doctor's quarters when the sentries were shouting the call of "Half-past twelve o'clock." Nellie Bayard, in her dainty little white room, was whispering over a tear-stained pillow her prayer for the safety of Randall McLean, who was riding post-haste down the swollen Platte. Dr. Bayard, too excited to go to bed, had thrown himself on a sofa and was plotting for the future and planning an alliance for his fair daughter that would mean power and position for himself. And Mr. Holmes was sitting with darkened face at his bedside, gazing blankly at the handkerchief he had picked up on the floor just in front of the bureau, a handkerchief embroidered in one corner with the letters R. McL.