"Then why, in the face of the Immortal Ironies, are you putting my butler under the microscope?" was the return shot that came from the flying column. The acidulated sweetness of that attack even nettled me into a right-about-face. "Look here," I suddenly demanded, "have either of you missed anything valuable about here lately?" The two gazed at each other for a moment in perplexed wonder. "Of course not," retorted the woman in the dinner gown. "Not a thing!" "And you know you have everything intact, all your jewelry, your plate, your pocketbooks, the trinkets a sneakthief might call it worth while to round up?" "Of course we have. And I can't even resent your bracketing my pocketbook in with the trinkets." "But are you certain of this? Could you verify it at a moment's notice?" "My dear Witter, we wouldn't need to. I mean we're doing it every day of our lives. It's instinctive; it's as much a habit as keeping moths out of the closets and cobwebs out of the corners." "What's making you ask all this?" demanded the heavy artillery. "Yes, what's suddenly making you into a Holmes's watchman?" echoed the flying brigade. Still again I saw that it was going to be no easy thing to intimate to persons you cared for the possibility of their sleeping on a volcano. Such an intimation has both its dangers and its responsibilities. My earlier sense of delight in a knowledge unparticipated in by others was gradually merging into a consciousness of a disagreeable task that would prove unsavory in both its features and its _finale_. "I'm asking all this," I replied, "because I have good reason to believe this paragon you call Wilkins is not only a criminal, but has come into this house for criminal purposes." "For what criminal purposes?" "For the sake of robbing it." Beatrice Van Tuyl looked at me with her wide-open azure eyes. Then she suddenly bubbled over with golden and liquid-noted laughter. "Oh, Witter, you're lovely!" "What proof have you got of that?" demanded Jim. "Of my loveliness?" I inquired, for Jim Van Tuyl's solidity was as provocative as that of the smithy anvil which the idler can not pass without at least a hammer-tap or two. Yet it was this same solidity, I knew, that made him the safest of financiers and the shrewdest of investors. "No," he retorted, "proofs of the fact that Wilkins is here for other than honest purposes." "I've no proof," I had to confess. "Then what evidence have you?" "I've not even any evidence as yet. But I'm not stirring up this sort of thing without good reason." "Let's hope not!" retorted Jim. "My dear Witter, you're actually getting fussy in your old age," said the laughing woman. It was only the solemnity of her husband's face that seemed to sober her. "Can't you see it's absurd? We're all here, safe and sound, and we haven't been robbed."