"Keep quiet."
"Mrs. Price, I beg of you—"
"Suzanne, sit down."
But she went on, looking like a withered old witch, with her bird-like hands clutched on the chair back:
"I won't sit down, I won't keep quiet. I've sat here listening to all this and I've had enough. I'm crazy; my baby's gone; she's taken it, she's taken everything—" She turned to her mother. "She took your jewels—I know it."
Mr. Janney burst in like a bombshell. I never thought he could break loose that way, with his voice shrill and a shaking finger pointing into his stepdaughter's face.
"Stop this. I can't stand for it—I know something about that—I saw—"
But she wouldn't stop, no one could make her:
"I saw too, and I'm going to tell you. I don't care what you say, I don't care what you think of me—my heart's broken and I don't care for anything but to have my baby back." She addressed her mother again. "I went to take your jewels that night. Yes, I did; I went to steal them—not all of them—just that long diamond chain you never wear. You know why; you knew I hadn't any money and that I had to have it. I was going to sell it and put what I got in stocks and if I was lucky buy it back so you'd never know. It was I who took Bébita's torch—that's why it was lost—and I went down to the safe. I'd found the combination in a drawer in the library and learnt it. And when I opened it everything was gone. Some one had been there before me, the cases were all together in their box but they were empty." She clawed at the embroidered purse hanging on her arm and began to jerk at the cord, pulling it open. "But I found something, something the thief had dropped, lying on the floor just inside the door." She drew out a twist of tissue paper, and unrolling it held it toward the Chief; "I found that."
He took it, scrutinizing it, puzzled, through his glasses. Every one of us except Miss Maitland, all standing now, craned forward to see. It was a pointed pink thing about as big as the end of my little finger. The Chief touched it and said: