One of the best illustrations of the practical necessity of some first-hand knowledge is that afforded by the recovery of a diamond necklace belonging to the wife of a gentleman in a Connecticut town. The facts that are given here are absolutely accurate. The gentleman in question was a retired business man of some means who lived not far from the town and who made frequent visits to New York City. He had made his wife a present of a fifteen thousand-dollar diamond necklace, which she kept in a box in a locked trunk in her bedroom. _While she had_ _owned the necklace for over a year she had never worn it._ One evening having guests for dinner on the occasion of her wedding anniversary she decided to put it on and wear it for the first time. That night she replaced it in its box and enclosed this in another box, which she locked and placed in her bureau drawer. This she also locked. The following night she decided to replace the necklace in the trunk. She accordingly unlocked the bureau drawer, and also the larger box, which apparently was in exactly the same condition as when she had put it away. But the inner box was empty and the necklace had absolutely disappeared. Now, no one had _seen_ the necklace for a year, and then only her husband, their servants, and two or three old friends. _No outsider could have known of its existence._ There was no evidence of the house or bureau having been disturbed. A New York detective agency was at once retained, which sent one of its best men to the scene of the crime. He examined the servants, heard the story, and reported that it _must have been_ an inside job—that there was _no possibility_ of anything else. But there was nothing to implicate any one of the servants, and there seemed no hope of getting the necklace back. Two or three days later the husband turned up at the agency’s office in New York, and after beating about the bush for a while, remarked: “I want to tell you something. You have got this job wrong. There’s one fact your man didn’t understand. The truth is that I’m a pretty easy going sort of a feller, and every six months or so I take all the men and girls employed around my house down to Coney Island and give ’em a rip-roaring time. I make ’em my friends, and I dance with the girls and I jolly up the men, and we are all good pals together. Sort of unconventional, maybe, but it pays. I _know_—see?—that there ain’t _a single one_ of those people who would do me a mean trick. Not one of ’em but would lend me all the money he had. I don’t care _what_ your operator says, the person who took that necklace came from outside. You take that from me.” The superintendent, who is wise in his generation, scratched his chin. “Is that dead on the level?” he inquired. “Gospel!” answered the other. “I’ll come up myself!” said the boss.