“There has been a robbery at Mrs. Ralston’s?”
“Of course. And you didn’t know a thing about it?” she mocked him.
“I certainly did not.”
“You say that just as if it were so,” she observed admiringly. “I don’t suppose you are aware that some one did really substitute a counterfeit brooch for Mrs. Vanderpool’s wonderful pink pearl and bronze diamond brooch, after all? Oh, no, you don’t know that. You’re only a poor little ignorant dear. Bless its innocent little heart! It didn’t know a thing. Not it!” She was talking baby-talk now, the while her fingers were playing with Bob’s ear. He was so interested in what she was saying, however, that he failed to note the baby-talk and overlooked the liberties she was taking with his hearing apparatus.
“By jove!” he exclaimed. “That accounts for what I thought I saw in the hall that night when I left your room. Imagined I saw some one! Believe now it was some one, after all. And that door I heard click? Whose door is that on the other side of the hall from your room and about twenty-five feet nearer the landing?” Excitedly.
“Gwendoline Gerald’s,” was the unexpected answer.
Bob caught his breath. He was becoming bewildered. “But nothing was missing from Miss Gerald’s room, was there?” he asked.
“Don’t you know?” said she.
“I do not.”
“My! aren’t you the beautiful fibber! I’m wondering if you ever tell the truth?”