"What's all this, what's all this?" cried Sebastian, running up to the mantelpiece. Then he clasped his hands over his bald spot in a gesture of despair. "Oh!" he moaned. "How perfectly terrible! How perfectly terrible!" "Great Snakes, ain't that too bad!" observed Mr. Pegg. "Lucky thing you got them picture post cards of it, Mark! Where d'you s'pose the sons of guns got in anyways? And how comes it that you girls are burglar-hunting in your party clothes when you ought to be tearing off a little beauty sleep?" "We talked so late!" explained Peaches, gazing into her father's eyes with a wonderful, direct, innocent look. "And we got so hungry that we came down to forage--and on the way I dropped in for this book"--she held it up toward him--"and, of course, we noticed right off the bat that the Madonna was gone." "She ran right up and got you," I added. "And now you know as much as we do." "Humph!" said Mr. Pegg, still looking at the book his daughter had offered him. "Couldn't sleep without it, eh?" "This is terrible, this is terrible!" exclaimed our host, paying no attention to anything except his loss. "Ring the bell! Summon everybody! Where is Wilkes? I told him to come down at once." "You told him?" asked Peaches swiftly. "Where was he?" "In his room, of course!" snapped Markheim. "Spoke to him on the house telephone! What did you suppose? Oh, my precious painting! This is outrageous--outrageous! Did they take anything else?" Peaches and I exchanged a glance of relief. Wilkes had been in the house. Whatever his mysterious mode of egress, the step we had heard in the garden was no evidence that he had used it to-night. This thought passed between us in a flash as she replied: "Haven't the faintest idea, old boy. Let's have a look!" "I want to make sure!" he said. "But first let's see how they did it." Climbing upon a footstool which he dragged forward for the purpose, Markheim then proceeded to an examination of the picture frame, while we gathered about curiously. "Can't understand it!" he puffed after a moment of silence. He shook his head like a Japanese doll. "Can't understand what?" I asked. "Why, the whole canvas has been removed--stretcher and all!" he cried. "Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" "Why?" Peaches wanted to know. "Shows they took their time!" Markheim explained. "Able to unmount the canvas--and it takes skill to roll an old painting! By jove, yes! Usually simply cut it out of the frame, like the Mona Lisa, you know. Only way, really, if you are in a hurry. Yes, they took their time!" "Then the frame--I mean the stretcher--ought to be somewhere!" suggested Mr. Pegg brightly. "Nonsense--utter nonsense!" exclaimed Markheim, climbing down. "And now let's give a look round. Heaven only knows what else may be gone!"