But Anne’s pearl collar was different.  In the first place, instead of three or four hundred people, the suspicion had to be divided among ten.  And of those ten, at least eight of us were friends, and the other two had been vouched for by the Browns and Jimmy.  It was a horrible mix-up.  For the necklace was gone—­there couldn’t be any doubt of that—­and although, as Dallas said, it couldn’t get out of the house, still, there were plenty of places to hide the thing.

The worst of our trouble really originated with Max Reed, after all.  For it was Max who made the silly wager over the telephone, with Dick Bagley.  He bet five hundred even that one of us, at least, would break quarantine within the next twenty-four hours, and, of course, that settled it.  Dick told it around the club as a joke, and a man who owns a newspaper heard him and called up the paper.  Then the paper called up the health office, after setting up a flaming scare-head, “Will Money Free Them?  Board of Health versus Millionaire.”

It was almost three when the house settled down—­nobody had any night clothes, although finally, through Dallas, who gave them to Anne, who gave them to the rest, we got some things of Jimmy’s—­and I was still dressed.  The house was perfectly quiet, and, after listening carefully, I went slowly down the stairs.  There was a light in the hall, and another back in the dining room, and I got along without any trouble.  But the pantry, where the stairs led down, was dark, and the wretched swinging door would not stay open.

I caught my skirt in the door as I went through, and I had to stop to loosen it.  And in that awful minute I heard some one breathing just beside me.  I had stooped to my gown, and I turned my head without straightening—­I couldn’t have raised myself to an erect posture, for my knees were giving way under me—­and just at my feet lay the still glowing end of a match!

I had to swallow twice before I could speak.  Then I said sharply: 

“Who’s there?”

The man was so close it is a wonder I had not walked into him; his voice was right at my ear.

“I am sorry I startled you,” he said quietly.  “I was afraid to speak suddenly, or move, for fear I would do—­what I have done.”

It was Mr. Harbison.

“I—­I thought you were—­it is very late,” I managed to say, with dry lips.  “Do you know where the electric switch is?”

“Mrs. Wilson!” It was clear he had not known me before.  “Why, no; don’t you?”

“I am all confused,” I muttered, and beat a retreat into the dining room.  There, in the friendly light, we could at least see each other, and I think he was as much impressed by the fact that I had not undressed as I was by the fact that he had, partly.  He wore a hideous dressing gown of Jimmy’s, much too small, and his hair, parted and plastered down in the early evening, stood up in a sort of brown brush all over his head.  He was trying to flatten it with his hands.