Judy felt it too. She sprang up and ran to the window where she stood looking out. I could see the tears running down her face--partly from relief, of course, over the clearing of her lover, but partly, I think, from pity. She had no disposition to gloat over him, anyhow. Mr. Smith was the only one of us who remained unmoved. He hadn’t completely finished. “Now we’ll come to the events of this morning. I don’t know, Mr. Applebury, where the necklace was when you wakened. It may have been taken by a thief after you had dropped asleep again. Or it may have still been under your pillow.” Bruce had found his voice again. “Do you mean to insinuate ...” he began. “Not at this moment,” interrupted Mr. Smith. “I’ll do my insinuating a little later. “As I said, we don’t know where the necklace was when you waked up this morning. But we do know that upon your bureau, left there by your cousin, Bill Grant, was a note from Judy telling you that you might keep the necklace, and that at that price she was quit of you. “We know that his actual errand to your room was to leave that note; that it was for this purpose that he had undressed and gone to bed and waited for you to fall asleep. “We know with what feelings you regard your cousin. It doesn’t want much imagination to picture you as furiously angry, as anxious to avenge the humiliation you felt he had put upon you. The fact that your cousin had been in the room during the night and that he had now left his room and the house, offered you an apparently easy revenge. “Now I’ll make my insinuation, if you like. We have nothing but your unsupported assertion that any robbery whatever has taken place. You lied in accusing your cousin of the theft, and I find it easy to believe that you have lied in declaring that any theft occurred.” CHAPTER XVII SOME MUST WATCH I looked at Bruce in astonishment. In everything but the bare form of the words he had been accused of having, himself, stolen the necklace, and it was amazing the way the accusation had brought him back to life again. His moment of collapse was past. His face was afire with anger. He turned upon me. “I decline to rest under this infamous charge,” he said. “I insist upon being searched at once; that my room and my effects be searched. That necklace was gone when I waked up this morning.” He turned upon Mr. Smith. “You can’t accuse an honest man of theft and get away with it.” “I’m glad you’ve made that discovery,” the old gentleman replied quietly. “However, I haven’t made a charge. Nothing but the same sort of insinuation which you made against your cousin. The necklace may have been stolen after he and Judy left the house last night. I’m inclined to think it was.” “Have we got to go on _talking_?” Bruce demanded of me. “Can’t we go in my room and begin the search?”