The evening of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner was the time I decided upon as the most convenient for taking the stones. I had heard from Jeffers that the marquis and marchioness were going. When her ladyship left her rooms that afternoon I heard her tell Jeffers that she would not be back till after six, and to have everything ready at that hour. Off and on for the next two hours I was doing work about the corridor with a duster. It was near six when I heard the two servants talking in the sitting-room. A bird’s-eye view through the keyhole showed me where they were, and that they were engaged in searching for something in the desk. It was my chance. With my housemaid’s pass-key I opened the door a crack, and peeped in. The leather case of the diamonds stood on the dressing-table not twenty feet from the door. It did not take five minutes to enter, open the case, take the necklace, and leave. Jeffers heard me. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she could have got into the hall I was in the broom-closet hunting for a dust-pan. But she evidently suspected nothing, for the door did not open and there was no indication of disturbance. Two days later Tom and I returned from our “business trip” to the Continent. I quite prided myself on the way our luggage was labeled. It had just the right knock-about, piebald look. We drove up in a four-wheeler, Handsome Harry on the box, and Maud opened the door for us. For the next few days we were quiet and kept indoors. We spent the time peacefully in the kitchen, breaking the settings of the diamonds and reading about the robbery in the papers. As soon as things simmered down, Tom was to take the stones across to Holland, where they would be distributed. We threw away the settings, and put the diamonds in a small box of chamois-skin that I pinned to my corset with a safety-pin. That was the way things were--untroubled as a summer sea--till ten days after our return, when I began to get restive. I had had what they call in America “a strenuous time” at Burridge’s, working like a slave all day, with not a soul to speak to but a parcel of ignorant servant women, and I wanted livening up. I longed for the light and noise of Piccadilly, the crowd and the restaurants; but what I wanted particularly was to go to the theater and see a play called “The Forgiven Prodigal.”