“Yet here’s Victoria pleading with me to let it ride; not turn a hand nor say a word. She seems to think she knows where it is, or at all events, that it will turn up. Well, that’s all right if she’s got the correct hunch. But suppose she hasn’t? I’ll feel uncommonly flat facing my mother to-morrow when she comes out of the effect of the stuff they’ve given her, if I have to tell her that the necklace hasn’t been heard from, and that I’ve done nothing toward recovering it.” “I’m not sure,” I said, “that you haven’t done the best thing possible toward recovering it.” He looked at me with a stare of surprise. “You mean by doing nothing, by saying nothing?” he asked. “That’s what you must mean, of course, because that’s all I’ve done. But I’m not sure that I see how you figure it out. Effect of suspense and uncertainty--that sort of thing? Psychology getting in its deadly work?” “Something like that,” I said. “Well, it won’t, and I’ll tell you why. A thing like that can’t be kept dark. It’s known already--half known. Things like that get passed around. I could feel it crackling all around the dinner table to-night. By morning everybody in the house will know that something’s happened. And Victoria might as well have let me call the police in the first place.” “No,” I insisted. “There’s a difference between knowing a thing that’s admitted and knowing a thing that’s not admitted. Society--with a big S--lives on that difference. We never call anybody a liar. We go on acting as if we believed the official version of things until the facts fairly stare us down.” He laughed. “That statement is true,” he said, “and it’s equally true of the Moro chieftains in the island of Mindanao.” “All right,” I said. “Now consider this. There are three sorts of persons in that house: family, guests and servants. They’re all going to stay until after the wedding, day after to-morrow. There’s no reason why anybody should leave, at least, and if anybody does, on whatever pretext, he’ll be under heavy suspicion. But it’s not likely that the person who took the necklace will try to leave. The hullabaloo and the breaking up of the party is very likely just what he’s hoping for. But nothing happens. Nothing’s said. And the inference from that is that some one’s been found out. That we know and therefore we can afford to wait. So there’s a pretty good chance that the thief, so to speak, will take his first opportunity to restore the necklace.” “That’s ingenious,” he was polite enough to say. “But I confess the strong-arm method appeals to me rather more.” “It can’t be applied,” I said. “A search is no good unless you search everybody.” “That’s what I want,” he insisted. “That’s exactly what I mean. Everybody.” “Including your mother?” I asked. Again I encountered his quick intense stare. It wasn’t hostile, though. He was thinking, hard. “You’re right,” he said. “That can’t be done.”