“If no one can take me,” said the Spanish girl irritably, not taking any notice of the question, “I shall walk.”
“But I thought you were ill?”
“I am, but the walk will help my head.”
“No, I cannot permit it,” said Mrs. St. Clair firmly. “Go to your room and in another hour you will be sent home.”
Fannie started to reply, but she checked herself and left the room. Mrs. St. Clair, stripped of her smiles and good-natured pleasantries, was not a person to be disobeyed, and Fannie was quick to recognize that fact.
She had hardly reached the second floor, when she heard the whirring sound of a motor cycle, followed almost immediately by a quick ring of the bell. Fannie leaned far over the banisters, and when she turned to go to her room, after a small, dapper-looking man had been admitted, she was somewhat embarrassed to find Mrs. St. Clair’s maid looking at her with an expression of extreme amazement.
Fannie hurried to her room and for the next fifteen minutes stood irresolutely first on one foot, then on the other. Finally, with an air of determination, she opened her satchel.
In the sitting room downstairs Mrs. St. Clair and Mr. Bangs were in close conference.
“I do not really know the girl, Mr. Bangs. She is a Cuban or a South American, or something. Her name is Alta and she was brought here by my son’s guest. It is impossible for me to accuse a visitor in my own house of stealing the most valued and handsomest possession I have in the world. She is a queer little creature and looks sly and unreliable to me. But, of course, that is not really evidence. What I have been racking my brain all night and morning to recall is whether it was not she who, when she helped me off with my ghost dress last night, fumbled at my neck a moment.
“It amounts to this, Mr. Bangs,” the widow continued after a pause, “I can’t get over the impression that she has stolen my necklace. The other children here I have known all their lives. My servants have been with me for years, and she is the one suspicious person in the house. Now, what I want you to do is to help me to find out the whole thing without arousing her suspicions. If she is the thief, she may return the necklace, and be sent back to town before the others arrive, and it will be easy enough to make excuses. You are a very able man, Mr. Bangs, and I know that you are only home for a rest, but I do so need your help. Now, what do you advise?”