I had done work of that kind before--once in New York, and at another time in Paris; having been born and spent my childhood in that cheerful city, my French is irreproachable. The famous robbery of the Comtesse de Chateaugay’s rubies was my work--but I mustn’t brag about past exploits. I had never been engaged in a hotel theft of the importance of the Castlecourt one. The necklace was valued at between eight thousand and nine thousand pounds. The stones were not so remarkable for size as for quality. They were of an unusually even excellence and pure water. After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and cool. They were an extremely simple layout. Lady Castlecourt was a beauty--a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was what might have been expected. What might not have been expected was that she appeared to reciprocate his affection. Having made a careful study of the manners and customs of the upper classes, I was not prepared for this. I note it as one of those exceptions to rule which occur now and then in the animal kingdom. Besides the marquis and his lady, there were a maid and a valet to be considered. The former was a dense, honest woman named Sophy Jeffers, close on to forty, and of the unredeemed ugliness of the normal lady’s maid. Such being the case, it was but natural to find that she was in love with Chawlmers, the valet, who was twenty-seven and good-looking. Jeffers was too truthful to tamper with her own age, but she did not feel it necessary to keep up the same rigid standard when it came to Chawlmers. It was less of a lie to make him ten years older than herself ten years younger. From these facts I drew my deductions as to the sort of adversary Jeffers might be, and I found that, by a modest avoidance of Chawlmers’ society, I could make her my lifelong friend.