We both laughed over that as we bade him farewell. But we turned pretty serious as we watched him walk away with his little rifle. “Do you think he’s safe going around with a hundred-thousand-dollar necklace in his pocket?” I asked. “Yes, I think so,” Mr. Smith answered reflectively. “For one thing, he hasn’t got it in his pocket.” I must have gaped at him like a goggle-eyed fish. My mind once more had gone to pieces. Had the old gentleman done a sleight of hand trick when he returned that handkerchief? “Oh, he’s got just what he brought over here with him,” he added. “Undoubtedly the same thing his grandmother gave him this morning to hide for her. It’s not the necklace. It’s a very fair imitation of it, however.” “You’re perfectly sure of that, I suppose?” I asked weakly. He nodded. “You’d better go back to your couch where you’ll be comfortable,” he suggested. “We’ve got some thinking to do.” I agreed, and rang for Donovan. When he’d made me comfortable and gone away, Mr. Smith pulled up an easy chair for himself and lighted a cigar. “I know that necklace intimately,” he began. “I sold it to Punch’s grandfather in Paris, ’way back in the days of the Second Empire. Lord, what a while ago! A man shouldn’t be allowed to live as long as that. Eighteen hundred seventy it must have been, or thereabouts. “I’m a jeweler by profession, and I was managing director over there for Paulding and Revere. I’ve seen the necklace a number of times since. Mrs. Corbin always gave me a look at it whenever she came to Paris. So I can say with certainty that the thing Punch has in his pocket is not merely a necklace of imitation pearls; it’s an imitation, pearl for pearl, of that necklace. In fact, we can go a little further than that, if you don’t mind my prosing a bit.” “I don’t,” I assured him. “Both the French and the Japanese make imitation pearls,” he went on. “Serious imitations, I mean. Merely for purposes of wear, the French pearls are better. Their luster’s more like the real thing. On a pretty woman’s neck in a ballroom they wouldn’t be detected as not the real thing. But the moment you pick them up, they give themselves away. They’re much too light and much too translucent. Japanese pearls, on the other hand, are the right weight, or very near it, and they don’t betray themselves when you hold them against the light. But they haven’t the luster, not even the best of them. “Well, these are Japanese pearls. Whoever had the string made of them, it’s fair to assume, wanted them for some other purpose than wearing to parties. The French pearls would have been better for that, and cheaper too. But they wouldn’t serve if they had to deceive some one who had opportunities to handle them.” “In other words they were made to deceive old Mrs. Corbin,” I broke in. “Her eyesight has been failing for years.” “That’s very likely a good guess,” he said mildly. “But let’s not begin guessing just yet.