“The vigilance of the board of health has been most commendable in this case.  Beginning with a wager over the telephone that they would break quarantine in twenty-four hours, and ending with the attempt to span a twelve-foot gulf with a board, over which to cross to freedom, these shut-in society folk have shown characteristic disregard of the laws of the state.  It is quite time to extend to the millionaire the same strictness that keeps the commuter at home for three weeks with the measles; that makes him get the milk bottles and groceries from the gate post and smell like dog soap for a month afterward, as a result of disinfection.’”

We sat in dead silence for a minute.  Then: 

“Perhaps it is true,” I said.  “Not of you, Jim—­but some one may have tried to get out that way.  In fact, I think it extremely likely.”

“Who?  Flannigan?  You couldn’t drive him out.  He’s having the time of his life.  Do you suspect me?”

“Come away and don’t fight,” Anne broke in pacifically.  “You will have to have luncheon sent in, Jimmy; nobody has ordered anything from the shops, and I feel like old Mother Hubbard.”

“I wish you would all go out,” I said wearily.  “If every man in the house says he didn’t try to get over to the next roof last night, well and good.  But you might look and see if the board is still lying where it fell.”

There was an instantaneous rush for the window, and a second’s pause.  Then Jimmy’s voice, incredulous, awed: 

“Well, I’ll be—­blessed!  There’s the board!”

I stayed in my room all that day.  My head really ached and then, too, I did not care to meet Mr. Harbison.  It would have to come; I realized that a meeting was inevitable, but I wanted time to think how I would meet him.  It would be impossible to cut him, without rousing the curiosity of the others to fever pitch; and it was equally impossible to ignore the disgraceful episode on the stairs.  As it happened, however, I need not have worried.  I went down to dinner, languidly, when every one was seated, and found Max at my right, and Mr. Harbison moved over beside Bella.  Every one was talking at once, for Flannigan, ambling around the table as airily as he walked his beat, had presented Bella with her bracelet on a salad plate, garnished with romaine.  He had found it in the furnace room, he said, where she must have dropped it.  And he looked at me stealthily, to approve his mendacity!

Every one was famished, and as they ate they discussed the board in the area way, and pretended to deride it as a clever bit of press work, to revive a dying sensation.  No one was deceived; Anne’s pearls and the attempt to escape, coming just after, pointed only to one thing.  I looked around the table, dazed.  Flannigan, almost the only unknown quantity, might have tried to escape the night before, but he would not have been in dress clothes.  Besides, he must be eliminated as far as the pearls