“I don’t think I’d say that,” Bruce objected. “I think it _was_ rather stealthy. I know that it struck me at the time as rather queer that I hadn’t heard him coming in.” “You are sure you were perfectly broad awake when you did see him there?” Mr. Smith asked. “Yes, I’m sure of that. I think my asking him why he didn’t turn on the light shows it.” The old man nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said. “I think we may regard that as conclusive.” I got a sort of thrill out of that, and looking over at Judy I saw she’d got it too. But I didn’t, even then, know what he was driving at. He went on in a somewhat thoughtful tone. “So he took his cigarettes and went away, closing his door after him, I think you said. And you once more dropped off to sleep. And that’s the story.” He sat in thoughtful silence over it for a moment. Then he looked straight at Bruce and asked, “Mr. Applebury, was the necklace under your pillow at that time?” Bruce returned his gaze with a frightened stare. “In the light of what I’ve found out since,” he said, when he could make his voice come, “I think it’s natural to assume that it was not.” “I asked,” said Mr. Smith, and now his voice was like a shining sword, “I asked for your personal knowledge. Was the necklace under your pillow when your cousin went back to his room?” “I don’t know,” Bruce said. “It was gone in the morning anyhow.” “We’ll come to the morning presently. Mr. Applebury, let me ask you to consider what you’ve told us. “You’d gone to bed guarding a priceless thing which was in some danger of being stolen. You had chosen to guard it by putting it under your pillow, where by a touch, by the smallest movement of your hand, you could assure yourself from time to time of its safety. You were startled out of a deep sleep by the presence of an unknown man in your room, a man whose entrance, by your own statement, had seemed stealthy and unexplained. You didn’t know who he was until he spoke in answer to your question. “Do you pretend to assert seriously that your hand never moved under the pillow to discover whether the necklace was still there?” Bruce sprang to his feet. “Look here,” he said, through colorless lips, “I’ve been insulted far enough.” “Sit down,” commanded old Eagle-Eye. “I’m going to insult you a little further. You’ve made a statement which the mind of a child would reject as preposterous. I make the counter-statement that you did feel under the pillow; that you knew that the necklace was there before your cousin had had time to tell you who he was; that unless it had been there you would have raised an outcry upon the spot. You dropped asleep contentedly after he had gone back to his room because you knew it was still there.” There was a moment of dead silence. Bruce didn’t even try to speak. I felt, after the first flush of crude triumph, something painfully humiliating in the spectacle of as complete a demolition as that, even of one I’d been regarding as an enemy.