“Very well, dear. The more of you the better. To tell the truth, I am a little worried. It’s nothing, of course; I am sure to find it, but I should like to take a look before I go to bed.”
“Have you lost something, Mrs. St. Clair?” asked Mary.
“Yes, I have lost my pearl necklace. I really never missed it until a few moments ago. I have looked downstairs everywhere, but I feel sure that I dropped it in the attic when I was dancing that ridiculous twirling waltz with Ben. It serves me right for trying to be a young girl when I am really such an old lady.”
“You are really the youngest of us all,” protested the four young girls, following her on tiptoe up the stairs into the attic.
All the members of the searching party were sure that the necklace would be found at once somewhere on the attic floor, or in the folds of the sheet or the pillow-case Mrs. St. Clair had been wearing. Yet Billie and Mary had good reason to know that robbers were at large in the village of West Haven, and the memory of the face Billie had seen in the mirror suddenly became painfully distinct.
Mrs. St. Clair lit a few gas jets in the attic and the great place seemed ghastly enough in the half light with the grotesque jack-o-lanterns grinning at them from above; the black-curtained side shows and an occasional sheet and pillow-case made a weird picture.
They searched the floor carefully, looked into the booths with candles, shook out sheets and pillow-cases, but there was no sign of the missing necklace.
“If it had only been something else,” said Mrs. St. Clair. “I should rather have lost almost anything in the world than my pearl necklace. It was a wedding present from Percival’s father and I valued it more than all my other jewelry together. I don’t see how I could have dropped it so carelessly. When we went down to supper I threw a scarf around my shoulders and that is probably why I never noticed that my pearls were gone. You were standing near me, Mary, and Belle and her friend were there, too. You don’t remember to have noticed the necklace at that time, do you? One of you helped me on with my scarf.”
Mary shook her head.
“I must ask Belle and Miss Alta to-morrow. It is so important to know whether I lost the necklace up here or below.”