“Pardon me, but will you tell me where those two vases are, now? Is one of them in this room? Don’t squirm, Jimmy. We’re getting warm, I know, but please remember that you are not to interrupt unless you want a gag in your mouth. Madam, is one of the vases, of which you have two alike, now in this room?” “Yes.” Mrs. Remsen pointed toward a vase that stood upon a bracket in one corner of the room. “That one, there.” “Precisely. That is what I thought. Now, will you tell us where the other one—the one that is precisely like this one—is located at the present moment, to the best of your knowledge?” “Why, it is—or at least it should be—in the parlor of the red suite.” “And who occupies the so-called red suite of rooms?” “Mr. Dinwiddie.” “Precisely. Now, I have not been inside the rooms occupied by Mr. Dinwiddie, as you call Jimmy, here, so I will have to ask you if those two vases are, in reality, precisely alike. Has not one of them been broken at some time, and mended?” “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, one has. That is how I came to have two of them. A gentleman who was staying with us last fall broke one, but he found another like it and sent it to me after I had had the broken one mended.” “Madam, did it happen that the gentleman referred to was Mr. Dinwiddie?” “Y-yes, sir. It was Mr. Dinwiddie.” “And the broken vase—the one that was mended, I mean—is it now in the red suite that has been occupied by Mr. Dinwiddie since last Thursday?” “No,” she replied, pleased that he had asked the first question that called for a negative reply. “I thought he deserved to have the good one in his room, so I put it there, and brought the one that had been broken to this room. There it is now.” “Thank you. Will you be so good as to examine it more closely, so that you can assure yourself that you have made no mistake in regard to it?” Mrs. Remsen crossed the room to the vase. She raised it from the bracket, and held it in her hand for a moment. Then she exclaimed: “Why, this is strange. This is the vase that was broken; and there is something inside of it that I never noticed before.” “The jewels, Mrs. Remsen, by any chance?” “No. Something white. It looks like plaster of Paris. It——” “Permit me to see for myself,” said Nick, interrupting her, and he crossed the room with quick strides. One glance into the vase was enough. He saw what had been done, on the instant. He raised his eyes to Mrs. Remsen; he turned as if to speak to her; and then, as if it were done entirely by accident, he permitted the vase to fall crashing to the floor, where, weakened as it was by reason of a former fracture, it fell apart into three pieces. The diamond necklace that was Lenore Remsen’s property was exposed to view. CHAPTER XII. THE REVELATIONS OF NAN.