“She may have ordered the imitation made herself. She’s as likely to have wanted to deceive Victoria, let us say, as Victoria is to have wanted to deceive her. And with her poor vision she may have deceived herself. The real string may have been knocking about, unregarded for months, in some drawer of her dressing-table, while the imitation was lying in the safe. “All we know is that there are two strings, and that a person who couldn’t see very well, either because his eyes were bad, or because he was working in the dark, might easily mistake one for the other. We know that the imitation string is now in Punch’s pocket. But where the real string is we don’t know.” “It’s reasonably probable, isn’t it,” I asked, “that the necklace in Punch’s pocket is the same one that his grandmother showed him Wednesday afternoon, when she told him she meant to give it to Judy for a wedding present? It was taken from the safe, it was brought back, and it was handed by his grandmother straight to Punch.” “That’s as good a possibility as any,” said the old man. “The thief takes it in a hurry and more or less in the dark, discovers at his first good look at it that it’s an imitation, and brings it back. But there are other hypotheses just as good. “He may have seen a chance to take the real one at a time when he hadn’t the imitation at hand to replace it with, and then brought the imitation back in the hope that the loss hadn’t yet been discovered. It wasn’t made public, I understand. Or some one may have borrowed the real one and returned the imitation by mistake. Or one person may have stolen the real one, and some one else, who later discovered the theft and wished to shield the thief, may have brought back the imitation, thinking he was making restitution. You see, it’s endless. The most serious mistake we can make will be to begin thinking we know too much.” “Of course,” I agreed. “One could easily do a cruel injustice to an innocent person by jumping at conclusions.” “That’s not just what I mean,” he said gently. “Perhaps I should have said dangerous instead of serious. I’m more concerned over what may happen in the next twenty-four hours than I am over what may have happened--oh, any time within the last five years.” He gave me half a moment of silence to digest that in. “I’ll run the risk of speaking with the utmost plainness,” he then went on. “I think I can guess how this thing looks to you. You believe Victoria had that imitation string made for the purpose of imposing upon her mother-in-law and getting possession of the real one. You think she took alarm over Mrs. Corbin’s decision to give it to Judy, because she thought that such a gift would lead to the discovery of the substitution and that she’d be charged with it. You think that’s why she didn’t want me stopping in the house.