"My pearls," she went on, "I want my pearls. There are some women pearls love. I am one. When I wear them a little while they are alive. The colors in them glow and palpitate. They are never dull then. I do not wear them always, only on certain days--on feasts, and when I am very happy." "We must find them," said Quarles. "Of course. That is why I come to know you, isn't it?" The professor was full of her as we left the hotel. "A most charming woman," he said. "I doubt if you will find her so when you fail to restore her pearls." "I shall restore them," he said, with that splendid confidence which sometimes characterized him, but, having no faith in his judgment on this occasion, I went my own way. I searched the maid's boxes and found that she had purloined many of the contessa's things--garments which had hardly been worn, silk scarves, laces--in fact, anything which took her fancy, and which her mistress would not be likely to miss. Of the two men in the corridor I could find no trace. The manager said there were no workmen about the hotel at that time, and the only description I could get from the contessa was so vague that it would have fitted anybody from the Prime Minister to the old bootlace-seller at the end of the street. One of the hotel servants was confident that he had seen the French maid speak to a man in the street outside the hotel on more than one occasion, but he was not inclined to swear to anything. However, the French maid was finally arrested on suspicion. I knew that Quarles had been to see the contessa once or twice by himself, and when I went to the Brunswick Hotel on the day after Angelique's arrest, I found him there. "Ah, you have taken an innocent woman," the contessa exclaimed. "I think not." "What you think does not matter at all, it is what I know. I asked her, and she said she had not taken the pearls. Voila! She would not tell me anything that was not true." "But, contessa--" "I say there is no evidence against her. You just find two or three of my stupid things in her room, but that is nothing. French maids always take things like that--one expects it. But I am not angry. You think what is quite--quite silly, but you do something which is quite right." And then, turning to the professor, she went on, "But you--you do nothing at all. You come to tea. You come and look at me, and think me very beautiful, which is quite nice and very well, but it does not give me back my pearls." "It will," said Quarles. "I have no opinion. I only know I have not the pearls. I gave you the empty case. I want it back with the earrings in it. I have heard that Monsieur Quarles is very clever--that he finds out everything, but--" "It takes time, contessa," he said, rising. "There is one thing I want to see before I go." "What is that?" she asked. "The dress the maid was wearing that afternoon, and if she wore an apron I want to see that too."