Miss Maitland, Private Secretary

"Sam, my jewels have been stolen."

Mr. Janney squared round, stared at her, and ejaculated in feeble denial:

"Oh no!"

"Oh yes," she answered with the same note of grim control, "Come and see."

When he saw, his old veined hands shaking as they dropped the rifled cases, he turned and blankly faced his wife who was watching him with a level scrutiny.

"Mary!" was all he could falter. "Mary, my dear!"

"Last night," she nodded, "when we were out. The place was almost empty. I'll call the servants."

She went to the foot of the stairs and called Elspeth, old Sam, bewildered by this sudden catastrophe, emerging from the safe, as pale and shaken as if he was the burglar.

"Last night, of course last night," he murmured, trying to think. "They were here at eight. I saw them, we saw them, anybody could have seen them."

Elspeth appeared on the stairs and came running down, Mrs. Janney's orders delivered like pistol shots upon her advance:

"I've been robbed. The safe's been opened and all the jewels are gone. Go and call the servants, every one of them. Tell them to come here at once."

Elspeth knew enough to make no reply, and, with a terrified face, scudded past her mistress to the kitchen. Mrs. Janney, her attention attracted by sounds of distracted amazement from her husband, mobilized him:

"Go and get Miss Maitland. We'll have to send for detectives. She can do it – she doesn't lose her head."

Mr. Janney, too stunned to be anything but meekly obedient, trotted off down the hall to Miss Maitland's study, then stopped and came back:

"She's in town; she hasn't got back yet."

"Tch!" Mrs. Janney gave a sound of exasperation. "I'd forgotten it. How maddening! You'll have to do it. Go in there to the 'phone" – she indicated the telephone closet at the end of the hall. "Call up the Kissam Agency – that's the best. We had them when the bell boy at Atlantic City stole my sables. Get Kissam himself and tell him what's happened and to take hold at once – to come now, not to waste a minute. And don't you either – hurry! – "

Mr. Janney hasted away and shut himself in the telephone closet, as the servants, marshaled by Dixon and Elspeth, entered in a scared group. They had been taking tea in their own dining room when Elspeth burst in with the direful news. Eight of them were old employees – had been years in Mrs. Janney's service. Hannah, the cook, had been with her nearly as long as Dixon; Isaac, the footman, was her nephew. Dixon's large, heavy-jowled face was stamped with aghast concern; the kitchen maid was in tears.

Mrs. Janney addressed them like what she was – a general in command of her forces:

"My jewels have been stolen. Some time last night the safe was opened and they were taken. It is my order that every one of you stay in the house, not holding communication with any one outside, until the police have been here and made a thorough investigation. Your rooms and your trunks will have to be searched and I expect you to submit to it willingly with no grumbling."

Dixon answered her:

"It's what we'd expect, Madam. Me and Isaac both know the combination and we'd want to have our own characters cleared as much as we'd want you to get back your valuables."

Hannah spoke:

"We'd welcome it, Mrs. Janney. There's none of us wants any suspicion restin' on 'em."

Delia, the housemaid with the inflamed eye, took it up. She was a newcomer in the household, and in her fright her brogue acquired an unaccustomed richness:

"God knows I was in my room at nine, and not a move out of me till sivin the nixt mornin' and that's to-day."

Mr. Janney, issuing from the telephone closet, here interrupted them. He addressed his wife:

"It's all right. I got Kissam himself. He'll be here on the 5:30."

She answered with a nod and was turning for further instructions to Dixon when Suzanne entered from the balcony. Up to that moment Mr. Janney had forgotten all about his nocturnal vision; now it came back upon him with a shattering impact.

He felt his knees turn to water and his heart sink down to inner, unplumbed depths in his anatomy. He grasped at the back of a chair and for once his manners deserted him, for he dropped into it though his wife was standing.

"What's all this?" said Suzanne, coming to a halt, her glance shifting from her mother to the group of solemn servants. She looked very pretty, her face flushed, the blue tint of her linen dress harmonizing graciously with her pink cheeks and corn-colored hair.

Mrs. Janney explained. As she did so old Sam, his face as gray as his beard, watched his stepdaughter with a furtive eye. Suzanne appeared amazed, quite horror-stricken. She too sank into a chair, and listened, open-mouthed, her feet thrust out before her, the high heels planted on the rug.

"Why, what an awful thing!" was her final comment. Then as if seized by a sudden thought she turned on Dixon.

"Were all the windows and doors locked last night?"

"All on the lower floor, Mrs. Price. Me and Isaac went round them before we started for the village, and there's not a night – "

Suzanne cut him off brusquely:

"Then how could any one get in to do it?"

There was a curious, surging movement among the servants, a mutter of protest. Mr. Janney intervened:

"You'd better let matters alone, Suzanne. Detectives are coming and they'll inquire into all that sort of thing."

"I suppose I can ask a question if I like," she said pertly, then suddenly; looking about the hall, "Where's Miss Maitland?"

"In town," said her mother.

"Oh – she went in, did she? I thought her day off was Thursday."

"She asked for to-day – what does it matter?" Mrs. Janney was irritated by these irrelevancies and turned to the servants: "Now I've instructed you and for your own sakes obey what I've said. Not a man or woman leaves the house till after the police have made their search. That applies to the garage men and the gardeners. Dixon, you can tell them – " she stopped, the crunch of motor wheels on the gravel had caught her ear. "There's some one coming. I'm not at home, Dixon."

The servants huddled out to their own domain and Dixon, with a resumption of his best hall-door manner, went to ward off the visitor. But it was only Miss Maitland returning from town. She had several small packages in her hands and looked pale and tired.

The news that greeted her – Mrs. Janney was her informant – left her as blankly amazed as it had the others. She was shocked, asked questions, could hardly believe it. Old Sam found the opportunity a good one to study Suzanne, who appeared extremely interested in the Secretary's remarks. Once, when Miss Maitland spoke of keeping some of her books and the house-money in the safe, he saw his stepdaughter's eyelids flutter and droop over the bird-bright fixity of her glance.

It was at this stage that Bébita ran into the hall and made a joyous rush for her mother:

"Oh, Mummy, I've waited and waited for you," – she flung herself against Suzanne's side in soft collision. "I've lost my torch and I've asked everybody and nobody's seen it. Do you know where it is?"

Suzanne arched her eyebrows in playful surprise, then putting a finger under the rounded chin, lifted her daughter's face and kissed her, softly, sweetly, tenderly.

"Darling, I'm so sorry, but I haven't seen it anywhere. If you can't find it I'll buy you another."

CHAPTER VI – POOR MR. JANNEY!

The peace and aristocratic calm of the Janney household was disrupted. Into its dignified quietude burnt an irruption of alien activity and the great white light of publicity. Kissam with his minions came that evening and reporters followed like bloodhounds on the scent. Scenes were enacted similar to those Mr. Janney had read in novels and witnessed at the theater, but which, in his most fevered imaginings, he had never thought could transpire in his own home. It was unreal, like a nightmare, a phantasmagoria of interviews with terrified servants, trampings up and down stairs, strange men all over the place, reporters on the steps, the telephone bell and the front door bell ringing ceaselessly. Everybody was in a state of tense excitement except Mr. Janney whose condition was that of still, frozen misery. There were moments when he was almost sorry he'd married again.