The officer was taken to the back drawing-room, whence the bracelet disappeared. It presented nothing peculiar. The folding-doors between it and the front-room stood open, the back window, a large one, looked out upon some flat leads. He seemed to take in the points of the double room at a glance: he examined the latches of the two doors opening to the corridor, he looked next from the front windows and then from the one at the back. From the front ones ordinary ingress was impossible; it was nearly as much so from the back one.
The officer leaned out for some time, but could make nothing of a case; The window was shut in by a balcony that just encircled it, and was not accessible from the leads underneath. The house was one of a row, or terrace, of houses, and they all bore the same features: the leads running along below; the confining balconies to the windows on this floor above. But the windows could not be gained from the leads except by means of a ladder; and the balconies were not at all near each other.
"Nothing to be suspected there," concluded the officer, bringing in his head and shoulders. "I should like, if you please, ma'am, to see Miss Dalrymple."
Lady Sarah went for her, and brought her. A delicate girl, with a transparent skin, looking almost too weak to walk. She was in a visible tremor, and shook as she stood before the police-officer: whose name, it turned out, was Pullet.
But he was a man of pleasant manners and speech, and he hastened to reassure her. "There's nothing to be afraid of, young lady," said he, with a broad smile. "We are not ogres: though I do believe some timid folks look upon us as such. Just please to compose yourself; and tell me as much as you can recollect of this."
"I laid out the bracelets here," began Alice, indicating the table underneath the window. "The diamond bracelet, the one lost, I placed just here," she added, touching the middle of the table at the back, "and the rest I put around it."
"It was worth more than any of the others, I believe, ma'am?"
"Much more," growled the colonel.
The officer nodded to himself and Alice resumed:
"I left the bracelets, and went into the other room and sat down at one of the front windows——"