“That is possible,” she interrupted, with a sudden look of interest. “Oh, not you. Punch! I don’t _think_ he ever has walked in his sleep. He may have done it this time, though. That necklace has been an obsession with him for days.” There was no denying, of course, that this was a possibility. But Victoria didn’t pursue it. “I’ll tell you why I came,” she went on, laying down her cigarette and coming a little more sharply into focus. “Alec is acting rather stupid about this and stubborn. He gets that from his mother, I guess. He’s determined to make a hullabaloo about it. Send for detectives, question the servants, search everybody, and that sort of thing. Judy and I have done all we could to call him off, without getting anywhere. He feels his responsibility, he says, as the man of the family. All I could get him to agree to was to wait until he’d talked to you. He’s in the dining-room now smoking with the men, but he’s coming over to see you as soon as he can get away.” “And _you_ want me to persuade him to do nothing,” I said. I didn’t inflect it like a question. Cowardice that was, I’ll admit. And Victoria assumed that I would do as she wished. It is an assumption she always makes with men, I think. “Of course,” she went on petulantly, “I don’t know whether it will do any good. There’ll be my mother-in-law to reckon with as soon as she comes out of the hypodermic Miss Digby gave her. I want Alec on our side, actively, you know, before that happens.” “Yes,” I said faintly, “I see.” Then I rallied my courage. I admit it was the memory of what Punch had said--“I want the thief caught. I’m not afraid who it’ll turn out to be”--which served as my trumpet call. “Look here, Victoria. There may be a reason why I should try to persuade Alexander Corbin to let the necklace go and keep the theft dark, but I won’t undertake it unless I know what the reason is.” She looked at me a little ruefully. “You never did like me very well,” she remarked. “I think I can fairly be counted one of your friends,” I told her, “and I think I’ve understood pretty well some of your difficulties. I really want to help you now. But I can’t step off in the dark. I want to know why the thing Alec proposes isn’t the natural thing to do; the thing I’d do myself in the circumstances. He _has_ got a responsibility in the matter, and I don’t wonder that he feels it.” “Oh, I suppose so,” she agreed. I looked up at her and saw, to my astonishment, that there were tears in her eyes. “You talk about my difficulties. You _don’t_ know them; not the beginning of them. I’ve been trying for the last ten years to give my children the sort of bringing up they deserve to have. It’s the only thing I’ve cared anything about. That’s true, whether you believe it or not. And I’ve been hampered and suspected and quarreled with all the time by that terrible old woman who’s my mother-in-law.