It abounded, of course, in odd, unused and half-forgotten nooks and crannies. On a rainy day Punch found endless enjoyment in exploring these, and he probably knew more about the house, little of his life as he had spent in it, than anybody else, his grandmother included. The old lady appeared for the first time that day about four o’clock. She impressed Punch as unusually bright, and in the main, good-humored, although her dismissal of poor Miss Digby at sight of him was brusk, and her comments on his mother’s continued absence decidedly caustic. She put him in charge of her wheel chair, and elected to make a tour of the house to see how things were going. There were still workmen on every floor, but it began to look as if they were going to finish in time. From the wheel chair she allotted the rooms for her expected guests, from memory. Although she forgot some of them, and her plans had to be heavily revised, it struck the boy as a remarkable evidence, not only of her disposition to run things, but of her ability to do so. His mother wouldn’t have been capable of it, he felt pretty sure. But of course she’d never have tried to do it without a list. The outline of the scheme was simple enough. The unmarried men, groom, best man, ushers and odd relations, such as Punch’s mysterious Uncle Alec, were to have the top floor. Punch’s own quarters were up there. The middle of this story was a billiard room. It was surrounded by a regular rabbit warren of bedrooms and the only daylight it got came from a big window on the landing of the stairs. Married couples, maiden aunts, bridesmaids and so on had their rooms on floors below. Punch found all these decisions and indecisions rather stupid--his thoughts remained on the necklace--and when the tour of inspection was finally finished and his grandmother returned to her own sitting-room, he tactfully brought up the subject by asking her how old she supposed the safe was and whether his grandfather had bought it. It was a rather big old-fashioned affair of cast iron, lacquered, and with a picture of a startled stag painted on the door--one of the first works of art that Punch had ever admired. “Yes, your grandfather bought it,” the old lady admitted. “And it’s a good safe, too. They don’t make things as well as that now-a-days.” “Perhaps not,” Punch agreed. “But I think they make them harder to break into. I read in a magazine a while ago that any safe more than ten years old might just as well be left unlocked, as far as burglars were concerned.” “Well, I don’t leave this one unlocked,” his grandmother said grimly, “burglars or no. What are you getting at, you young rascal? Still thinking about that necklace?” Punch admitted that he was. “Like a look at it?” she asked. Would he! He darted over to the safe. “Let me unlock it, Gran,” he pleaded. “Tell me the combination. See if I can do it.” “You let it alone,” she ordered. “I’ll do it myself.”