Her tone was composed, almost good-natured, but rather cold. My guess is she was glad she was saved the trouble of telling me what had happened, but at the same time a little put out by this indication that I was deep in Punch’s confidence. He was always rather reticent with her. After she’d come into my sitting-room and greeted me, she turned back to him. “Run along home now,” she said curtly, “and tell Judy I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” He obeyed her with alacrity; he barely nodded a farewell to me as he said, “All right, mother,” and disappeared. If he felt any curiosity as to our interview, he didn’t show it. I think he was glad just then not to talk to her. She did the polite thing by my broken leg, helped herself, at my invitation, to one of my cigarettes, and settled down, with a deep-drawn, very audible sigh, in the big chair which Punch had just vacated. “I suppose you know,” she said, “the ghastly thing that’s just happened over at The Oaks?” “I know as much about it as Punch knows,” I said somewhat tentatively. As a matter of fact, Victoria herself had astonished me. For in spite of her sigh and her use of the word ghastly to describe the theft, her manner was almost complacent. It seemed incredible that this should be so, but there was no getting away from it. The mental picture I’d formed of her during the past couple of days, derived mostly from the reports I’d been getting from Punch, had been of a woman driven half frantic by worry, involved in some sort of dangerous web. The web appeared, certainly, to be woven about the necklace. She had, according to Judy, sustained a shock when she read in the paper that it was to be given to her daughter as a wedding present. She’d quarreled furiously with old Mrs. Corbin about it. It had caused--apparently, at least, it was the thing that had caused--sudden alterations in her plans. I had taken for granted, though on insufficient evidence perhaps, that it was the theme of that mysteriously emotional conversation with Judy, which Punch had heard the end of, on the night of Alexander Corbin’s arrival. Yet now, within a couple of hours of the discovered theft of the precious dangerous thing, she sat there looking at me as calm and contented as a cat who had just licked the meringue off the top of a lemon pie! Oh, I exaggerate, of course. One does with Victoria. “I wonder if you _do_ know as much as Punch knows,” she remarked, thoughtfully exhaling a deep lungful of smoke. “Oh, I suppose so, though Alec had the idea that Punch might have taken it himself.--Not to keep, of course,” she added hastily, “but perhaps as a prank to teach his grandmother a lesson. Or to save it from being stolen by burglars.” Victoria went down to her nadir with me just then. I’ve never found it harder to keep up the appearance of friendliness. “For that matter,” I said, “I may have taken the thing myself. Gone over on crutches in my sleep....”