"Great Snakes, ain't that too bad!" observed Mr. Pegg. "Lucky thing you got them picture post cards of it, Mark! Where d'you s'pose the sons of guns got in anyways? And how comes it that you girls are burglar-hunting in your party clothes when you ought to be tearing off a little beauty sleep?"
"We talked so late!" explained Peaches, gazing into her father's eyes with a wonderful, direct, innocent look. "And we got so hungry that we came down to forage—and on the way I dropped in for this book"—she held it up toward him—"and, of course, we noticed right off the bat that the Madonna was gone."
"She ran right up and got you," I added. "And now you know as much as we do."
"Humph!" said Mr. Pegg, still looking at the book his daughter had offered him. "Couldn't sleep without it, eh?"
"This is terrible, this is terrible!" exclaimed our host, paying no attention to anything except his loss. "Ring the bell! Summon everybody! Where is Wilkes? I told him to come down at once."
"You told him?" asked Peaches swiftly. "Where was he?"
"In his room, of course!" snapped Markheim. "Spoke to him on the house telephone! What did you suppose? Oh, my precious painting! This is outrageous—outrageous! Did they take anything else?"
Peaches and I exchanged a glance of relief. Wilkes had been in the house. Whatever his mysterious mode of egress, the step we had heard in the garden was no evidence that he had used it to-night.
This thought passed between us in a flash as she replied: "Haven't the faintest idea, old boy. Let's have a look!"