In the meantime, Mrs. St. Clair, left to the quiet seclusion of her own home, became forthwith a very determined and resolute character.

First she summoned to her aid the old colored butler, who had been with her many years, and together they searched every part of the house where she had been the night before. They went over the attic thoroughly and satisfied themselves that the lost pearl necklace could not have been dropped there. They hunted through the downstairs rooms, shook out the sofa cushions, looked under the rugs and behind curtains. There was not a crack nor cranny of the rooms she had lately frequented that Mrs. St. Clair and old Randolph did not scour.

Like many another easy-going, amiable soul, Mrs. St. Clair, when roused to action, was capable of the most surprising, almost fierce determination, and when Fannie Alta returned, pleading the excuse of a headache, she hardly recognized in the white intense face, the rosy, dimpled countenance of the widow.

Fannie retired to her room, but when Mrs. St. Clair went to the telephone in the upper hall, she crept to the door, opened it a crack, and overheard snatches of this conversation:

“Do you happen to have a good detective? That’s fortunate. The famous Mr. Bangs home on his vacation? Has a motor cycle? Very well, he ought to get here in an hour. Tell him to hurry. Thank you. Good-by.”

A tray of luncheon was brought to Fannie, but she ate very little. She sat in her room thinking hard. Then, with a sudden resolution, she jumped up and began to move about. First she packed her valise. Then, tying her handkerchief about her head, she put on a very woe-begone expression and left the room. Mrs. St. Clair was in the living room, a maid told her, and Fannie found her pacing nervously up and down the bright, chintz-hung place.

“I am afraid you are not feeling so well, Miss Alta,” the widow said politely, but with just a shade of coldness in her tone.

“I am much worse,” answered Fannie. “I feel quite ill. I wish to return to my mamma. May I be driven home?”

Mrs. St. Clair hesitated and a very strange expression came into her face.

“You may go in a few hours, Miss Alta. There is no one to take you just now. Randolph is needed here and the other men are off working on the place. Perhaps you had better lie down in your room until I can arrange to send you back. Did you try the aromatic spirits of ammonia?”

“If no one can take me,” said the Spanish girl irritably, not taking any notice of the question, “I shall walk.”

“But I thought you were ill?”

“I am, but the walk will help my head.”

“No, I cannot permit it,” said Mrs. St. Clair firmly. “Go to your room and in another hour you will be sent home.”

Fannie started to reply, but she checked herself and left the room. Mrs. St. Clair, stripped of her smiles and good-natured pleasantries, was not a person to be disobeyed, and Fannie was quick to recognize that fact.

She had hardly reached the second floor, when she heard the whirring sound of a motor cycle, followed almost immediately by a quick ring of the bell. Fannie leaned far over the banisters, and when she turned to go to her room, after a small, dapper-looking man had been admitted, she was somewhat embarrassed to find Mrs. St. Clair’s maid looking at her with an expression of extreme amazement.

Fannie hurried to her room and for the next fifteen minutes stood irresolutely first on one foot, then on the other. Finally, with an air of determination, she opened her satchel.

In the sitting room downstairs Mrs. St. Clair and Mr. Bangs were in close conference.

“I do not really know the girl, Mr. Bangs. She is a Cuban or a South American, or something. Her name is Alta and she was brought here by my son’s guest. It is impossible for me to accuse a visitor in my own house of stealing the most valued and handsomest possession I have in the world. She is a queer little creature and looks sly and unreliable to me. But, of course, that is not really evidence. What I have been racking my brain all night and morning to recall is whether it was not she who, when she helped me off with my ghost dress last night, fumbled at my neck a moment.

“It amounts to this, Mr. Bangs,” the widow continued after a pause, “I can’t get over the impression that she has stolen my necklace. The other children here I have known all their lives. My servants have been with me for years, and she is the one suspicious person in the house. Now, what I want you to do is to help me to find out the whole thing without arousing her suspicions. If she is the thief, she may return the necklace, and be sent back to town before the others arrive, and it will be easy enough to make excuses. You are a very able man, Mr. Bangs, and I know that you are only home for a rest, but I do so need your help. Now, what do you advise?”

“Have you looked among her things yet?” asked the detective.

“No, because the conviction only came to me after she returned. I did have suspicions, I will admit, but I put them aside. When she came back I saw that she was uneasy and anxious, and only a few moments ago she asked to be sent home.”

“H-m,” mused the detective. “Suppose,” he continued, “that you call her down and let me talk to her as if I needed her assistance, she being the only member of the party available.”

The advice was acted upon, and presently Fannie, still with the handkerchief swathing her forehead, looking very nervous and pale, entered the room.

“Miss Alta,” began the widow kindly, “I am sorry to have disturbed you when you were ill, but we are in great trouble and we thought perhaps you might help us. Did you know that last night I lost my beautiful pearl necklace, the most precious thing I have in the world?”

Fannie showed great surprise.

“Did it not come unclasped and slip?” she suggested.

“I have reason to believe that it did not slip from my neck, because we have searched the place thoroughly. It must have been taken. I talked it all over with the other girls last night and they helped me look for it, but now I need some one else, and in their absence I have sent for you. Mr. Bangs, who is a detective, has come down to lend me his aid, and we thought we might take you into the conspiracy with us.”

The widow paused for breath.

Fannie sat down and folded her hands nervously.

“I do not see how I can help,” she said, after a pause.

“Possibly you cannot,” put in Mr. Bangs, “but Mrs. St. Clair thought you might have noticed something unusual, and being a guest were too polite to speak of it. For instance, were you standing near Mrs. St. Clair when she removed the sheet and pillow case?”

“Yes,” said Fannie, “there were several of us in the party.”

“Did you notice who unpinned the sheet for Mrs. St. Clair?”

Fannie paused a long time without replying.

“It was not you who did it?”

The young girl compressed her lips and looked the detective squarely in the eye.

“The girl who unpinned the sheet was Mary Price,” she replied, “and since you are determined to question me, I will tell you.”

She drew a deep breath, looked first at the detective, then at Mrs. St. Clair, and proceeded:

“I did notice that she removed the sheet from your shoulders and her actions were very strange. But, knowing what I did, I was not surprised, and I am not surprised to hear now that you have lost something valuable, Mrs. St. Clair,” she went on, more and more glibly, as she saw she was gaining the interest of the other two.

“What were Miss Price’s actions?” asked the detective, taking Fannie’s statements in the order she had made them.

Fannie frowned.

“Oh, I do not know. She was strange. She behaved strangely and she went away at once.”

“You mean she left the room?”

“I cannot say. I saw her no more until supper.”

“Where were you?”

“Oh, I was about, dancing, playing, laughing with the others,” replied Fannie carelessly.

“You said a moment ago you knew something about Miss Price. Will you tell us what it is?”

“Ah, but I hesitate. It is unkind to spread so terrible a story.”

“We will treat it confidentially,” said the detective drily.

“A great many people know it already,” went on Fannie. “The whole school knows it, in fact. Miss Gray, the principal, and some of the teachers, who have lost money and articles. I, myself, have good reason to know it.”

“What is it that you know?” asked the detective.

“That Mary Price is a thief. She has been stealing all the autumn from the other girls and the teachers at the High School.”

“Oh, impossible! I will not believe it,” cried Mrs. St. Clair. “Dear, sweet, quiet Mary. There must be some mistake, Miss Alta. You should be more careful how you spread such dangerous gossip. Mary Price and her mother have many devoted friends in West Haven.”

“You may ask Miss Gray, then. She will tell you,” said Fannie stiffly.

“Just to verify your statement, Miss Alta, I will telephone Miss Gray this instant,” exclaimed the widow angrily, leaving the room and hastening upstairs to the telephone.

While she was gone, and she was away some time, the detective began to question Fannie. He was a very experienced man in his profession and he pressed her so skillfully that several times she tripped in her answers and finally grew excited.

“I tell you it is true,” she cried. “She not only is a thief, but she has a confederate. Billie Campbell is her assistant. Perhaps you think I took the necklace,” she burst out at last. “You have the right to search among my things. I had no way to know that suspicion rested on me. If I took the necklace, it will still be among my things.”

“Don’t get excited, Miss Alta, nobody has accused you of anything. We simply needed your valuable evidence. Why do you say Miss Campbell is a confederate to the thieving?”

Fannie had gone farther than she intended, however, and she refused to give any more information. But the detective saw that when she was angry and frightened, she would talk, and after a pause, he said:

“You perhaps know that you are the only person in the household on whom suspicion might rest.”

“I don’t see why I should be suspected,” she exclaimed hotly, “when Mary Price is already known to be a thief——”

“Perhaps you have a grudge against Miss Price?”

“I have not,” she cried, stamping her foot.

“Did no one ever suspect you of taking the things at the High School? You know that often happens—one girl is blamed for another’s——”

Fannie flew into a passion.

“I tell you Billie Campbell and Mary Price are thieves. They have a whole box of valuable things they have stolen, stored away in Mrs. Price’s safe.”

“What sort of things?”

“Jewelry,” burst out Fannie, then stopped and bit her lip. “But I may be mistaken about that,” she added, trying to speak calmly.

Mrs. St. Clair hurried into the room with the necklace in her hand.

“Where did you find it?” asked Mr. Bangs.

“I found it,” she began, then paused. “It was found,” she added. “You may go, Miss Alta. Thank you very much. And if you care to go back to town, Randolph will drive you in at once.”

When Fannie had left the room, the widow beat her hands together, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I found it in Mary Price’s bag,” she said. “And Miss Gray tells me that it is true. Mary has been suspected of stealing all autumn.”