“It’s gone!” Serge exclaimed. He turned to face the girls, his hands spread wide in a gesture of despair. “It’s gone!”
CHAPTER XXVI
Melissa Again
Sim smiled a little bitterly. “If you mean the snuffbox,” she said, “we know it’s gone. It has been for some time.”
“Then you know about it?” Serge asked.
“We knew Dimitri had it, if that’s what you mean,” Arden went on. “But we don’t know where it is now.”
“Of course,” the young man breathed a sigh of relief, “Dimitri has it with him, wherever he is.”
“He may have. We can’t prove he hasn’t,” Terry said explaining. “But why should he have broken open his own cupboard?”
“You’re right!” exclaimed Serge. “He would never have done that.”
“I wonder what that man who jumped overboard was doing,” Sim mused. “I don’t see that he has touched anything in here.”
After a look around, they all agreed that, whatever was his mysterious reason for coming, he apparently had left in a hurry. Several books that had been on the table now lay on the floor, but that was all in evidence.