But there were four special officers and three reporters watching the house, as a result of Max Reed’s idiocy.  Once, after trying all the other windows and finding them guarded, we discovered a little bit of a hole in an out-of-the-way corner that looked like a ventilator and was covered with a heavy wire screen.  No prisoners ever dug their way out of a dungeon with more energy than that with which we attached that screen, hacking at it with kitchen knives, whispering like conspirators, being scratched with the ragged edges of the wire, frozen with the cold air one minute and boiling with excitement the next.  And when the wire was cut, and Bella had rolled her coat up and thrust it through and was standing on a chair ready to follow, something outside that had looked like a barrel moved, and said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.  It would be certain to be undignified, and probably it would be unpleasant—­later.”

We coaxed and pleaded and tried to bribe, and that happened, as it turned out, to be one of the worst things we had to endure.  For the whole conversation came out the next afternoon in the paper, with the most awful drawings, and the reporter said it was the flashing of the jewels we wore that first attracted his attention.  And that brings me back to the robbery.

For when we had crept back to the kitchen, and Bella was fumbling for her handkerchief to cry into and the Harbison man was trying to apologize for the language he had used to the reporter, and I was on the verge of a nervous chill—­well, it was then that Bella forgot all about crying and jumped and held out her arm.

“My diamond bracelet!” she screeched.  “Look, I’ve lost it.”

Well, we went over every inch of that basement, until I knew every crack in the flooring, every spot on the cement.  And Bella was nasty, and said that she had never seen that part of the house in such condition, and that if I had acted like a sane person and put her out, when she had no business there at all, she would have had her freedom and her bracelet, and that if we were playing a joke on her (as if we felt like joking!) we would please give her the bracelet and let her go and die in a corner; she felt very queer.

At half-past four o’clock we gave up.

“It’s gone,” I said.  “I don’t believe you wore it here.  No one could have taken it.  There wasn’t a soul in this part of the house, except the policeman and he’s locked in.”

At five o’clock we put her to sleep in the den.  She was in a fearful temper, and I was glad enough to be able to shut the door on her.  Tom Harbison—­that was his name—­helped me to creep upstairs, and wanted to get me a glass of ale to make me sleep.  But I said it would be of no use, as I had to get up and get the breakfast.  The last thing he said was that the policeman seemed above the average in intelligence, and perhaps we could train him to do plain cooking and dishwashing.