The boy plunged a hand deep into his pocket and pulled out a wadded and rather grimy handkerchief which he spread open on the table. There the thing was, all right. I stared at it fascinated. It was beautiful, of course, that perfectly graded series of shining globes, but I was moved by the sight of it to reflect how ridiculously artificial our values are. That thing would buy leisure for a man’s lifetime. Comparatively few men from the cradle to the grave are able by their labors to earn as much as would be needed to buy it. Numberless men alive in the world to-day would commit any crime up to murder to possess it. It seemed absurd when one thought of it like that. Possibly to carry out the illusion the thing wanted a better background. Perhaps it suffered from the indignity of contact with a small boy’s pocket handkerchief. Old Mr. Smith took the thing in his fingers--unusually intelligent-looking old fingers they were, as if habituated to handling pearls. Then I glanced up at his face, and was struck by a conviction which for the moment put the necklace clean out of my mind. He had stuck a monocle into one eye. The gleam may have come merely from the lens, but from wherever it came, there was so piercing a brilliancy in his gaze that I almost shouted, “Old Eagle-Eye!” aloud. I didn’t, of course. He went on studying the necklace, and Punch sat gazing from his face to mine. Of course--of course! Why hadn’t I identified him at once? He was the man Judy was to prevent, at all costs, from getting a chance at something--the necklace, beyond a doubt. That was why Victoria hadn’t wanted to keep him in the house. Well, the best laid plans go wrong sometimes. Victoria had overdone it. There sat old Eagle-Eye with the necklace in his hands. What was he going to do with it? I’ll admit that in my confounded state of mind I’d hardly have been surprised at anything. I didn’t really expect him to perpetrate a robbery with violence then and there, but I was vividly conscious, for a fleeting instant, that Punch’s little rifle was leaning up in the corner of the room, far out of reach. It only shows what an atmosphere of persistent mystery will do to the ordinarily well-behaved mind. Mr. Smith, however, remained calm, and when he had done examining the necklace, folded it up again in Punch’s handkerchief, rather negligently I thought, and handed it over to the boy. “Put it back in your pocket, Punch,” he said. “I can’t think of a safer place for it.--But now that you’ve gratified our curiosity,” he went on, “I think you’d better stretch the promise you gave your grandmother to include everybody, out of the house as well as in it. Who are in the house, anyway? Do you know them all?” “Oh, hardly any of them, if you mean do I _really_ know, not just who they’re supposed to be. I don’t think mother does, even; not the Applebury crowd.” “And the Appleburys,” commented Mr. Smith, “don’t know Judy’s crowd any better. It’s a perfect situation, in a way.”