The two men rose and they all strolled along towards the hotel.
"Curiously enough," Brodie went on, "I was wondering whether I should be likely to run up against you to-day, Grimm. We wanted to ask your advice, Inspector Ditchwater and I, about that little affair the night before last. You heard the particulars, I suppose?"
"I was in the smoking-room," Harvey Grimm admitted, "when Madame came running down in her dressing-gown. Naturally, we heard the story told a good many times."
"Just so! Madame, it seems," the detective continued, "heard nothing, knew nothing, until late in the morning, when her maid told her that the floor valet was unable to obtain admittance to her husband's room. She at once stepped through the communicating door and found him still unconscious, with the necklace missing."
"Has he recovered yet?" Harvey Grimm enquired. "Is he able to give any account of what happened?"
"I saw him for a few minutes last night," Brodie replied. "He seemed still very dazed and confused, but he talked quite coherently. His story is simple enough and doesn't help us much. He was fast asleep—he can't even say at what hour—when he was awakened by the thrusting of a gag into his mouth and a bandage over his eyes. He thought at first it was a nightmare and he tried to spring out of bed. He was held down, however, quite firmly, and something placed under his nose which made him feel just as though, to use his own words, he was sinking back to sleep again. He remembers nothing more until the morning, when he was found by his wife. The moment they released the gag he was violently sick, and the room certainly smells ethery."
"What about the necklace?"
"Well, the necklace, for some reason or other, seems to have been kept in a tin dispatch-box in his room. It was locked, of course, but the keys were under his pillow, a fact which the thief, whoever it was, seems to have known. The box was simply opened and the necklace taken."
"It all sounds as though the thief must have been some one staying in the hotel," Aaron observed.
The detective smiled pleasantly upon him. They had left the Gardens now and were approaching the back entrance to the Milan.