“I haven’t got the pearl collar,” I protested.  “I think you are crazy.  Where did you get that bracelet?”

He edged away from me, as if he expected me to snatch it from him and run, but he was still trying in an elephantine way to treat the matter as a joke.

“I found it in a drawer in the pantry,” he said, “among the dirty linen.  And if you’re as smart as I think you are, I’ll find the pearl collar there in the morning—­and nothing said, miss.”

So there I was, suspected of being responsible for Anne’s pearl collar, as if I had not enough to worry me before.  Of course I could have called them all together and told them, and made them explain to Flannigan what I had really meant by my delirious speech in the kitchen.  But that would have meant telling the whole ridiculous story to Mr. Harbison, and having him think us all mad, and me a fool.

In all that overcrowded house there was only one place where I could be miserable with comfort.  So I stayed on the roof, and cried a little and then became angry and walked up and down, and clenched my hands and babbled helplessly.  The boats on the river were yellow, horizontal streaks through my tears, and an early searchlight sent its shaft like a tangible thing in the darkness, just over my head.  Then, finally, I curled down in a corner with my arms on the parapet, and the lights became more and more prismatic and finally formed themselves into a circle that was Bella’s bracelet, and that kept whirling around and around on something flat and not over-clean, that was Flannigan’s palm.

Chapter X. ON THE STAIRS

I was roused by someone walking across the roof, the cracking of tin under feet, and a comfortable and companionable odor of tobacco.  I moved a very little, and then I saw that it was a man—­the height and erectness told me which man.  And just at that instant he saw me.

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated, and throwing his cigar away he came across quickly.  “Why, Mrs. Wilson, what in the world are you doing here?  I thought—­they said—­”

“That I was sulking again?” I finished disagreeably.  “Perhaps I am.  In fact, I’m quite sure of it.”

“You are not,” he said severely.  “You have been asleep in a February night, in the open air, with less clothing on than I wear in the tropics.”

I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and because my feet were numb, I sat down on the parapet for a moment.  Oh, I knew what I looked like—­one of those “Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood” pictures.

“There is one thing about you that is comforting,” I sniffed.  “You said precisely the same thing to me at three o’clock this morning.  You never startle me by saying anything unexpected.”

He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk I could see that he was looking down at me oddly.  All my bravado faded away and there was a queerish ringing in my ears.