“But seriously!” said the other. “We have got to discover who he is, there must be some way of trapping him; but the only thing to do, and I must do it for my own protection, is to get you all together and share out. We had better meet.” Smith nodded. “When?” “To-night,” said Wallis. “Meet me at the.…” He mentioned the name of a restaurant near Regent Street. It was, curiously enough, the very restaurant where Gilbert Standerton invariably dined alone. CHAPTER X. THE NECKLACE Mrs. Cathcart was considerably surprised to receive an invitation to the dinner. She had that morning sent her daughter a cheque for three hundred pounds which she had received from her broker, but as their letters had crossed, one event had no connection with the other. She did not immediately decide to accept the invitation, she was not sure as to the terms on which she desired to remain with her new son-in-law. She was, however (whatever might be her faults), a good strategist, and there was nothing to be gained by declining the invitation, and there might be some advantage in accepting. She was surprised to meet Mr. Warrell, surprised and a little embarrassed; but now that her daughter knew everything there was no reason in the world why she should feel uncomfortable. She took him in charge, as was her wont, from the moment she met him in the little drawing-room at the St. John’s Wood house. It was a pleasant dinner. Gilbert made a perfect host, he seemed to have revived within himself something of the old gay spirit. Warrell, remembering all that Mrs. Cathcart had told him, was on the _qui vive_ to discover some evidence of dissension between husband and wife, the more anxious, perhaps, since he was before everything a professional man, to find justification for Mrs. Cathcart’s suggestion, that all was not going well with Gilbert. Leslie Frankfort, a member of the party, had been questioned by his partner without the elder man eliciting any information which might help to dispel the doubt that was in Warrell’s mind. Leslie Frankfort, that cheerful youth, was as much in the dark as his partner. It gave him some satisfaction to discover that at any rate there was no immediate prospect of ruin in his friend’s _ménage_. The dinner was perfect, the food rare and chosen by an epicure, which indeed it was, as Gilbert had assisted his wife to prepare the menu. The talk drifted idly, as talk does, at such a dinner party, around the topics which men and women were discussing at a thousand other dinner tables in England, and in the natural course of events it turned upon the startling series of burglaries that had been committed recently in London. That the talk should take this drift was more natural, perhaps, because Mrs. Cathcart had very boldly introduced the subject with reference to the burglary at Warrell’s.