"That is precisely what I have been doing," I admitted. "Please sit down, Mr. Samuelson." I wheeled an easy-chair up for him and placed a box of cigarettes at his elbow. "Quite a mysterious affair!" I continued. "It is almost the first burglary I have ever read of in which the police have not been said to possess a clew." Mr. Samuelson, who seemed gratified by his reception, lit a cigarette and crossed his legs, displaying a very nice pair of patent boots, with gray suede tops. "It is a very queer affair, indeed," he told me confidentially. "The police have been taking a lot of trouble about it, and a very intelligent sort of fellow from Scotland Yard has been in and out of the house ever since." "Any clew at all?" I asked. "Rather hard to say," Mr. Samuelson replied. "You'll be wondering what I've come to see you about. Well, I'll just explain. Of course there's always the chance that some one may have entered the house while we were all at dinner--crept upstairs quietly and got away with the jewel case; but this Johnny I was telling you about, from Scotland Yard, seems to have got hold of a theory that has rather knocked me of a heap. Very delicate matter," Mr. Samuelson continued, "as you will understand when I tell you that he thinks it may have been one of my guests who was in the show." "Seems a little far-fetched to me," I remarked; "but one never knows." "You see," Mr. Samuelson explained, "there's no back exit from my house without climbing walls and that sort of thing, and it happened to be a particularly light evening, as you may remember. There are policemen at both ends of the road, who seem unusually confident that no one carrying a parcel of any sort passed at anything like the time when the thing was probably done. This is where the Johnny from Scotland Yard comes in. He has got the idea into his head that the jewels might have been taken away in the carriage of one of my guests." "Well," I remarked, "I should have thought you would have been the best judge as to the probability of that. You hadn't any strangers with you, I suppose?"