It was over at last—the party was over; like everything else in life, things had turned out neither quite so good nor quite so bad as we had expected. "Mrs. Tankerville" was a failure—but then "William Tell" had been a success, so the score was even. The curtain had gone down on both of them, and was about to descend upon another little drama, if we had known it. Everyone said the evening was a great success, one more feather in the Pallinder crown; downstairs, under the colonel's benevolent supervision, limitless champagne flowed; the supper was a triumph; the german one of the prettiest ever danced. Muriel led with J. B., and some of the older people stayed to see it, and talked for days afterwards about the favours Mazie had brought from New York; the figure where the men got little silver pencil-cases and the girls painted gauze fans; and that other figure where they all looked so pretty with Japanese parasols and paper lanterns; and the figure where they had the Easter eggs—that was charming! But it was all over at last; blank dreariness and silence settled upon the ballroom, the last carriage rumbled away, the musicians sacked and boxed up their instruments and disappeared, featureless and unremarked, along with the caterers' men rattling their dishes, and banging amongst their folding chairs—"into the dark went one and all." They left behind a tired and not too good-tempered mob of young people; on the stage and behind it everything was in a frenzied disorder; and when in the pinched and colourless small hours, we went yawning to our beds, those useful articles of furniture were hardly to be found cumbered as they were with wreckage. There were hats, dresses, damp towels, artificial flowers and withering natural ones, slippers and odd stockings, soiled and tumbled veils, handkerchiefs, gloves, fans, the gilt and tinsel scraps of favours—it was a wilderness where the most amazing things turned up in the most amazing places. Somebody found a comb in a box of candy; a pair of corsets wrapped carefully together with some fine damask table-napkins, and sticking upright in a water-pitcher (an empty one by good luck); and old Mrs. Botlisch's teeth (the lower set) jammed firmly between the strings of a guitar that had been used in "Tell"—these were some of the discoveries. We were too tired to be amiable, and there were some sharp wrangles over lost nightdresses, and the ownership of tooth-brushes in the girls' quarters before we settled down for what was left of the night—the morning, rather. We were two in a bed, one on the lounge, and always three or four in a room according to the Pallinders' happy-go-lucky style of hospitality. The men, very likely, retired with even less formality; they had some big rooms in an ell running out from the main building at the back given over to their use.

It seemed as if I had no more than closed my eyes (and, as I afterwards found, it had actually only been about ten minutes since the last door locked and the last gas-jet was turned off) when the consciousness of disturbance somewhere about the house roused me. Someone was shouting out of a window, and being answered from below. The sash slammed; and presently there was the sound of stockinged feet padding downstairs. Kitty waked up, and crossly suggested that one of the guests had forgot something, and come back for it. "Of all things at this time of night!" she snapped. "Might have waited till daylight, seems to me. Some people have no sense!"

The bolts of the front door rattled, the hall-gas flashed up, sending a dim shaft of light through our transom; and a rumble of voices arose. Then the feet padded back, and there was some stir in Mrs. Pallinder's room.

"Oh, bother! Whatever it is, they'll never find it to-night in this mess," said Kitty vigorously. She sat up in bed. "Why don't they tell 'em to go home, and let us have a little peace and quiet?"

That simple expedient, however, did not seem to occur to anyone else. One of the girls awake in the next room called in that somebody must have lost some money or jewelry—"they couldn't be coming back for anything else." Again the feet padded down. The rumbling talk increased in volume. We distinctly heard Colonel Pallinder's voice, raised in explanation or argument, it was impossible to guess which; Mrs. Pallinder or someone in skirts went rustling along the hall. Apparently she paused to lean over the banister and listen a while. Lights began to start up elsewhere in the house; there was some movement among the men in their reservation; and old Mrs. Botlisch challenged raucously from her room at the end of the passage to know what was the matter. No one answered her, and after a moment there came a tap at our door. I got out of bed and opened it, full of uneasy wonder. There stood Mrs. Pallinder in a flowered blue silk tea-gown flung on anyway over her nightdress, and flowing about her in a huddle of lace and ribbons; she clutched it together at the throat; thin wisps of straw-coloured hair hung around her face. There was something indefinably alarming in the very haste and carelessness of her appearance, she who was always powdered and corseted to a fashion-plate correctness. She looked the scared ghost of her everyday self, immeasurably older, and a surprising likeness to Mrs. Botlisch came out on her harassed features.

"So sorry to disturb you, my dear," she said, with a tortured smile. "But can you wake Mazie—I want to speak to her."

"Nobody's sick, is there?" I asked, startled.

"Is it a telegram? It's not bad news for anyone, is it?" Kitty cried out apprehensively from the bed.

"No, no, it's nothing—really nothing at all," repeated Mrs. Pallinder—and this was so palpably false that even I could see through it. "Tell Mazie to come here, please, I want to speak to her."

"I'm coming," said Mazie drowsily, beginning to fumble in the dark for her slippers. And somebody, Muriel, I think, scrambled out of bed and lit the gas.

"You mustn't get up, don't any of you get up," said Mrs. Pallinder excitedly. "I tell you it's only Mazie I want to speak to. All of you go back to bed and go to sleep. Shut your doors and go to bed!" Her usually soft voice broke shrilly; she laid a hot trembling hand on my shoulder and pushed me back within the room. By this time, however, everybody was broad awake, staring, listening, and wondering. And Mrs. Botlisch began again:

"What's the matter? Is it fire? Mirandy, where are you? Is the house took fire?"

"No, it ain't, ma. Shut up, will you?" said Mrs. Pallinder roughly. Astonishment struck us all dumb; never before had we heard her speak so to the old woman. Mazie, looking very long and limp in her white gown with strands of black hair sailing down her back, came to the door, and her mother dragged her outside, slamming it on us sharply. More low-voiced confusion ensued. Mazie gave a high exclamation, and Mrs. Pallinder hushed her violently. All the girls congregated in the room, in wild array of curl-papers and "Mother Hubbards." In the hall one of the men could be heard asking what was the matter, and excuse him, but could he be of any use?

"What on earth do you suppose has happened?" said Kitty, no longer out of temper, but on edge with curiosity; before anyone could offer a guess, Mazie came back. She did not look at any of us; she did not speak; she walked straight to the bureau in her room, took a package from its top drawer, and walked straight out again. For so simple an act it was the strangest bit of pantomime that can be imagined; so quick and purposeful were her movements in contrast to her ordinary languor, that no one had a chance to ask questions, even if we had dared; but I believe we were all a little frightened by the unexplained change in her bearing and her mother's. There was a controlled menace about the girl; she dominated us to the last; and when she went out, closing the door not fiercely as her mother had done, but with a resolute gentleness, we should not have been surprised to hear the key turn in the lock. The scene was not without its ludicrous aspects; there we were eight or ten night-gowned girls, shivering in the draughts, perched here and there amid the rich, fantastic disorder of that room, while mystery whispered in the hall outside. We did not talk; we were all openly listening, and such was the tension that when Muriel said suddenly: "There's a carriage coming!" everyone in the room started violently. A girl by the window put the blind aside and peeped out cautiously. "Why, there's one here already!" she said, and then: "There're two men in the other; they're just getting out——"

Upon the words, a strange voice, a man's voice, cried out in the hall below, with mingled anger and surprise, "Damnation!" it shouted, "What d'ye mean by this?" Mrs. Pallinder screamed harshly like a strangling animal, and with a truly melodramatic fitness, the door bell began furiously to ring!

That was too much for us. I don't know who was first in the hall; it seemed as if we were all there at once. The immediate person I saw was Mazie standing against the opposite wall. She had snatched up some kind of shawl or blanket and wrapped it around her over her nightgown; her face was white, but she was laughing in a hysterical way. At the head of the stair Mrs. Pallinder clung to the newel. From the hall there arose a clamour of excited voices, punctuated by peal after peal on the bell like the knocking at the castle-gate in the awful scene of the murder from "Macbeth." The door of Mrs. Botlisch's room was open, and there was the old woman sitting up in bed, a tremendous figure in her red flannel nightdress, roaring out questions to which no one paid any attention.

"Oh, do go back, girls, do go back, here 're the men!" said Mazie, still giggling feebly.

"Men!" cried her grandmother, catching the word. "Time enough! I'd like to see someone with some sense. Where's that Taylor feller?"

"Taylor—what Taylor?" said I, bewildered. I thought, for an instant, the old woman had suddenly gone crazy, and wanted to be measured for a pair of breeches. Anything seemed possible in the hurly-burly.

"Here I am," said J. B., presenting himself in trousers and a night-shirt, one red sock and one polka-dotted blue one, and his suspenders trailing in the rear. "He went the kilt one better, didn't he?" said Kitty, recalling his appearance later, and she wondered what Muriel thought. But if the men were a weird crew, what were we?

"Here I am," said J. B. "What's the matter? Can I do anything?" He afterwards said that everything under the sun that could have happened went through his mind, from fire and murder to the reappearance of Arthur Gwynne's ghost—everything that could have happened, except the inconceivable thing that had happened!

Mazie ran to the banisters. "Do somebody open the door! Can't you hear the bell?" she screamed.

"Find out who it is first! Find out who it is—don't let them in without finding out!" Mrs. Pallinder called out desperately.

"You Taylor, for the Lord's sake, see what it's all about!" cried Mrs. Botlisch. "Mirandy, gimme my teeth——"

A fresh outbreak of voices downstairs announced that the door had finally been opened. Mazie came running back as Colonel Pallinder limped up the stairs. "There! Huddesley!" she exclaimed and burst into shrill laughter. "They're asking for him. The minute that man opened the package I thought about Huddesley. Never mind, ma, they can't come on us for anything. Huddesley's got the laugh on everybody!"

Mrs. Pallinder all at once broke into sharp crying. "I can't stand it, I can't stand it any longer!" she screamed out, and beat her hands together. "I can't stand this life, I tell you, I can't stand it!"

"All right, honey, you shan't have to," said the colonel, trying to soothe her. "I'll take care you shan't."

She pulled away from him furiously. "Oh, you!" she said with fierce scorn. "Oh, you!" And then in some strange and violent revulsion: "No, no, I didn't mean that, Willie, I didn't mean that, my dear!" and began to cry wildly in his arms. It was horrible.

I relate these circumstances as faithfully as I remember them; but it is difficult to give any idea of the mirthless farce, the grotesque tragedy of that night. It was at this moment, I believe, as we were all standing in a miserable embarrassment, and irresolution and (speaking for the girls, at least) something not unlike fright, that one of the strange men whom we had heard, came up the steps. He paused as his head rose above the landing, and he caught sight of us. Well he might! We must have been a fearsome picture.

"Sorry to intrude, ladies and gents," said he, hastily dropping back a little, and removing his hat. "But I gotta hump——"

J. B. came to the head of the flight, and, as it were, took command of the situation. He was no great figure of a hero with his suspenders slapping at his heels; but for all that he looked a manly and masterful young fellow, and I think we were all both grateful and relieved at his assumption of responsibility. No one else seemed equal to the needs of the hour.

"Look here," said J. B. quite pleasantly and firmly. "You can't come up here. These ladies must not be disturbed any more, do you understand? Now who are you and what do you want?"

"That's business," said the other frankly. "I'm a detective. My name's Grimm. I've got another plain-clothes man from your police headquarters downstairs, if you don't believe me, ask him——"

"Mr. Taylor—isn't that Mr. Taylor?" said someone from below. "Don't you remember me—Judd—don't you remember me at the bank?"

"That's all right," said J. B. "I remember you. Go ahead, Mr. Grimm, what do you want?"

"Well, say," said another voice a little farther down, "young fellow, if you're bossing this, my name's Hopple, and I——"

"One at a time," said J. B. forcibly. "Go on, Mr. Grimm."

"Right you are, sir," said Grimm fervently. "I thought I'd struck an asylum full of lunys at first, but I guess it ain't so after all. I'm looking for a man named Huddesley—that is, he called himself Huddesley here—that's wanted for several crooked jobs all over the country. I've been after him for six months. It's a dead cinch Huddesley's the man—Judd here's had an eye on him for six weeks——"

"That's what!" said Judd, with emphasis.

"——he was in the house to-night. Is he here now, do you know?"

"Huddesley has been here," said J. B., commanding his surprise. He turned his face towards us, and hushed us with a gesture. "Huddesley has been here, but he left the house some time ago, I don't quite know when. Miss Pallinder, do you remember when he went?"

He had to repeat the question twice before Mazie could get herself together enough to answer it. "When he went?" she said vaguely. "When he went?" Someone else said it was before midnight; at last Mazie exclaimed that it was three hours, oh, yes, she was sure it must be quite three hours since he had gone.

"He said he was sick and was going home—that is to Doctor Vardaman's, where he is employed," said J. B. "If you will go there, you may find him, the house is——"

"Find him the hell!" interrupted Mr. Grimm with dismay in his face. "When he's had three hours' start!" He made a gesture of finality. "It's all off!" said he. "Why, I've been to Doctor Vardaman's, mister, how'd you s'pose I happened to come here?"

"Somebody's tipped it off," said Judd, below stairs.

"That's what you get for peddlin' collar-buttons, sonny," said Grimm. "He was onto you from the word Go!"

"If he's not at the doctor's, I suppose he got wind of you somehow, and skipped out," said J. B., overriding these cryptic remarks, and anxious to end the business. "Anyhow that's none of our affair. Is that all you wanted to know, Mr. Grimm? For we're all tired and we'd like to go to bed."

"Here, wait a minute—" said Hopple, vigorously, and the detective, sweeping us with a comprehensive glance, spoke at the same moment: "Hold on, young man, no affair of yours, hey? Well, I ain't so sure about that. The old gent said he would likely have the handling of some valuables, a necklace or something. Will you kindly ask all those ladies if they'll take account o' stock and see if they're missing anything?"

The unseen Mr. Hopple uttered a strong exclamation. Every girl made a movement toward her bedroom, or nervously grabbed at some part of her person as her own particular treasures occurred to her. Every girl but Mazie, that is; and her next words, pronounced with entire calm, by the way, were comparable in effect to the explosion of a bomb amongst this singular company.

"Oh, mercy-me!" she said. "How slow you all are! Can't you see? Why, I saw it right off! I believe he's got the necklace!"

There was an instant of appalled silence. Then:

"Told you so! Always said he was a rascal!" cried Mrs. Botlisch triumphantly.

"Huddesley got the necklace?" said J. B. aghast. "Why, how could he? He gave it back to you. Bob Carson had it, didn't he?" Everybody spoke at once. The detective whistled, swore softly, then he stooped to mutter with Judd. "That's what!" said the latter vehemently. Two or three of the coloured servants had collected on the third-floor landing above us, and hung over the banisters, giggling and nudging. In the darkness their faces were nothing but shining teeth and eyeballs, reminding me, oddly enough, of a picture in "Alice in Wonderland," of the Cheshire Cat's grin materialising; Gwynne and I had had the book when we were little. I cannot think why I should have thought of it then, of all times; or, indeed, why the incongruous memory abides with me now. Mazie was speaking in a high, strained voice. "I never opened the package," she was saying. "Why, you know I didn't. I just took it from him and I never opened it. After 'Mrs. Tankerville' I locked the thing up and never thought of it again. I wouldn't have dreamed of suspecting Huddesley; why, he's been in and out of the house all day long for weeks, hasn't he, ma? Hasn't he, girls?" There was a kind of defiance in her voluble explanation. "Tell that Hopple man, will you?" she urged the detective, forgetting that "that Hopple man" was almost within arms' reach of her. "He'd better go after Huddesley if he wants his necklace—we haven't got it. Huddesley must have banked on my not opening the package; but anyhow, he was out of the house and gone long before I had a chance to——"

"Who's Bob Carson, and who's Mrs. Tankerville, and what package are you talking about?" Grimm inquired succinctly.

"Well, this is the package, I guess," said Hopple's voice, and two hands reaching up delivered to Mr. Grimm a crumpled piece of wrapping-paper, and about a ladleful of carpet tacks.

"There's your diamond necklace," continued the voice in hoarse satire. "Leastways there's what was given me for a diamond necklace. I don't know Huddesley from Adam's off ox, but it's a pretty slick sort o' story, seems to me."

What Mr. Hopple looked like, I cannot say, for none of us saw the gentleman. He made a movement to ascend the stairs, but J. B. looming very large and square on the top step intercepted him.

"Are you another detective, sir?" asked J. B. in his mild and steady voice.

"No, I ain't," returned Mr. Hopple, sulkily, yet not uncivilly this time.

"Then," said J. B. with increasing mildness, "perhaps you will be good enough to explain what you are doing here?"

"I'm collecting a bill for Goldstein Brothers—that's my business, collecting. I know it's a little bit late at night, but I can't help that. I've got to hump myself; I thought I might find somebody up on account of the blow-out——"

"It's an outrage, sir, an outrage which no Southern gentleman——" said Colonel Pallinder, turning from his wife. "I repeat, sir, no Southern gentleman——"

"If we had the money, don't you suppose we'd pay your old bill?" cried Mrs. Pallinder, in a kind of hysterical screech. Her face was red and swollen with crying; her fair hair hung in strings. She ran to the banisters and shook her slim fist at the man, a tousled virago, unrecognisable in her rage. "Why don't you believe us? As if anybody wanted to owe you—as if anybody liked to owe you! It's too silly—you act perfectly crazy! We'd have given you the necklace if we'd had it, but we haven't got it—Huddesley's stolen it. What are you staying around here for? We haven't got the money and we haven't got the necklace, I tell you! Why don't you go away? You haven't any right here—you're a cheat, trying to collect for that necklace when we haven't got it. Make him go away, Willie!"

"That's right, Mirandy, you talk to him like a Dutch uncle!" said old Mrs. Botlisch with keen enjoyment.

"I don't care—I'm glad Huddesley has got it!" said Mazie fiercely.

"Owing to circumstances—a temporary shortage of funds, sir," said Colonel Pallinder, addressing J. B., blandly, "I have been unable to satisfy this fellow's monstrous, his preposterous demand. But if—Mr.—ah—Mr. Hopple will come around to my office to-morrow at half-past eleven sharp, I——"

Mr. Hopple's voice invited him to teach his grandmother to suck eggs. "This here bill's been owing three years, and I'm going to collect it, don't you worry—I'll be at the office. I'm going to collect if I've got to hang around this town till the cows come home!"

"You can't get blood out of a turnip," said Mr. Grimm philosophically. J. B. interrupted this lively exchange of metaphor.

"Mr. Grimm," said he, "it's pretty plain, I think, that the criminal you want, this Huddesley, has got away with the diamond necklace. Why we never suspected him seems strange enough now; I can think of a dozen things that should have put us on our guard, but the fact remains we never did. If you'll just step downstairs, and wait until I can get some clothes on, I'll tell you all that we know about him. Mr. Hopple, you can see for yourself that there's nothing to be done here now. Your business can very well hold over until to-morrow—until daylight, that is—it's none of my business, of course"—he interrupted himself, glancing inquiringly at Colonel Pallinder, and as that gentleman remained silent, went on—"but I think it's about time you went to your hotel, and let these people go to bed——"

"Huh! I don't take my orders from you, young fellow!"

"Oh, don't be a fool, Hopple," said the detective impatiently. "He's right. Go along; you can't do anything here."

J. B. descended a step. "You don't have to take my orders, Mr. Hopple," said he gently. "But I should think you'd rather take an order than a kick."

"Noble boy!" ejaculated Colonel Pallinder, much affected. "There spoke a son of old Kentucky!" The collector retreated with sundry mutterings. J. B. came back, dusting his hands lightly together.

"Sir," said Colonel Pallinder, holding his wife with one arm, and stretching out the other in a fine gesture. "Your hand! A Southern gentleman, sir——"

"Oh—er—that's all right," said J. B., embarrassed. He turned a kind troubled glance upon us. "I wish all you girls and everybody would go to bed. It's—it's all right, you know. I'm going to see those fellows, and they'll go away presently."

"You're A Number One, that's what you are, Taylor," said old Mrs. Botlisch, in high approval. "You got more gumption in your little finger than all the rest of 'em in their whole bodies, d——d if you ain't!"

Mrs. Pallinder dried her eyes, and began to arrange her dishevelled dress with fluttering hands. "You mustn't mind ma, girls," she said, resuming her smile. "She's really awfully eccentric."