"Jennifer," he made answer. "No, not for any evil purpose, your ladyship. He doesn't know even yet that it was there, or that he ever in all his life held a thing so valuable in his hands. All that he does know in connection with it is that while he was cleaning those lustres out there in the hallway yesterday afternoon between four and five o'clock your son Bevis, out on one of his 'treasure raids,' paid him a visit, and that long after, when the old fellow came to replace the lustres on the chandelier, he discovered that one string was missing. "'I knowed the precious little rascal had took it, sir, of course,' was the way he put it in explaining the matter to me; 'and I felt sure I'd be certain to find it in his pirates' cave. But Lord bless you, it turned out as he hadn't took it there at all, as I found out a goodish bit afterward, when her ladyship comes down to the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, calls me up to give me the lint for Miss Eastman, and then gives a jump and a cry, like she'd just recollected something, and runs back upstairs as fast as she could fly. For when I looks down, there was the missing string of lustres lying on the landing right where her ladyship had been standing, and where he, little rascal, had went and hid it from me. So I picks it up and puts it back in its place on the chandelier just as soon as I'd taken the lint to Miss Eastman like her ladyship told me.' "In that, Lady Leake, lies the whole story of how it came to be where you saw me find it. Jennifer is still under the impression that what he picked up on that landing was nothing more than the string of twelve cut-glass lustres joined together by links of brass wire which is at this moment hanging among the 'treasures' in your little son's pirates' cave." "On the landing? Lying on the landing, do you say, Mr. Cleek?" exclaimed her ladyship. "But heavens above, how could the necklace ever have got there? Nobody could by any possibility have entered the boudoir after I left it to run down to the landing with the lint. You saw for yourself how utterly impossible such a thing as that would be." "To be sure," he admitted. "It was the absolute certainty that nobody in the world could have actually forced the key to the solution upon me. Since it was possible for only one solitary person to have entered and left that room since Sir Mawson placed the necklace in your charge, clearly then that person was the one who carried it out. Therefore, there was but one conclusion, namely, that when your ladyship left that room the Ladder of Light left it with you: on your person, and----Gently, gently, Lady Leake; don't get excited, I beg. I shall be able in a moment to convince you that my reasoning upon that point was quite sound, and to back it up with actual proof.