"And the paper?"
"When I saw the room was empty I went in. The paper had been pinned to a pillow on the bed. At first I thought it had been dropped or had blown there. When I saw the pin I was startled. I went back to my room and rang for Annie, the second housemaid, who is also a sort of personal maid of mine. It was half-past three o'clock when Annie came down. I took her into father's room and showed her the paper. She was sure it was not there when she folded back the bed clothes for the night at nine o'clock."
"Eleven twenty-two," I repeated. "Twice eleven is twenty-two. But that isn't very enlightening."
"No," she admitted. "I thought it might be a telephone number, and I called up all the eleven twenty-twos in the city."
In spite of myself, I laughed, and after a moment she smiled in sympathy.
"We are not brilliant, certainly," I said at last. "In the first place, Miss Fleming, if I thought the thing was very serious I would not laugh—but no doubt a day or two will see everything straight. But, to go back to this eleven twenty-two—did you rouse the servants and have the house searched?"
"Yes, Annie said Carter had come back and she went to waken him, but although his door was locked inside, he did not answer. Annie and I switched on all the lights on the lower floor from the top of the stairs. Then we went down together and looked around. Every window and door was locked, but in father's study, on the first floor, two drawers of his desk were standing open. And in the library, the little compartment in my writing-table, where I keep my house money, had been broken open and the money taken."
"Nothing else was gone?"
"Nothing. The silver on the sideboard in the dining-room, plenty of valuable things in the cabinet in the drawing-room—nothing was disturbed."
"It might have been Carter," I reflected. "Did he know where you kept your house money?"