He was kept waiting several minutes. From the distant reception rooms he heard acrimonious voices. One was the Baron’s and it pleased him to note that he had caught its inflections so well the night before. The other voice was that of his new friend, the Baroness. Unfortunately the conversation was in German and its meaning incomprehensible.
When at last he was shown into a drawing room he found the Baroness highly excited and not a little indignant. She was too much overwrought to take much interest in her new acquaintance. Almost she looked as though she wished he had not come. Things rarely looked so rosy to the Baroness as they did after a good dinner and it was but four o’clock.
“What has disturbed you?” he asked.
“Everything,” she retorted. “Mainly my husband. Tell me, if you were a woman and your husband, in a drunken fit, gave away a diamond necklace to an enemy would you be calm about it?”
“Has that happened?” he demanded.
“It has,” she snapped. “You remember I told you at the dance I had left the original necklace at home for safety?”
“I believe you did mention it,” he said, meditating.
“I’d much better have worn it, Mr. Trent. Everybody knows the Baron’s passion is for cognac and champagne. No man since time began has ever drunk so much of them. When we got back here last night we had a gay and festive time. It was almost light when I went to my room and found the necklace gone. I sobered the Baron and he could give absolutely no explanation. He said he had slept in the dressing room to guard the jewels. That was nonsense. He came there to worry my maid. She went to bed and left him drinking. The police came in and took all the servants’ finger-prints and tried to fasten the thing on them. There were marks on the jewel case where some one’s hands had been put. I offered a reward of five thousand dollars for any one who could point out the man or woman who had taken the necklace.”
Trent kept his countenance to the proper pitch of interest and sympathy. It was not easy.
“What have the police found?”