“That there was no evidence that a thief had broken into your home.”
“But what other explanation could there be?” she inquired. “Our family consists of just my mother, my sister and myself, and two old servants who have lived with us for years, so of course it wasn’t any of us.”
“Naturally not,” Taylor agreed as though this explanation had solved his doubts. “But how did you come to discover the loss of the diamonds?”
“I didn’t discover it myself,” she told him. “I was at Bar Harbor.”
“Oh,” said Taylor with the confidential air of a family physician. “You were away. I see! Who did find out?”
“My sister. It was she who missed them.”
“Oh, your sister missed them, did she?” he said.
He pushed the buzzer and wrote something on a slip of paper.
“So of course,” the girl continued, “it must have been some thief from the outside.”
Taylor looked thoughtful. “I suppose you’re right,” he admitted, and then asked quickly: “I wonder if you’d mind telephoning your sister to come down here now?”