“I always want something to cheer on these occasions,” he said.  “Where’s the water, Blakeley?  Everybody ready?” Then in French he toasted the two detectives.

“To your eternal discomfiture,” he said, bowing ceremoniously.  “May you go home and never come back!  If you take Monsieur Blakeley with you, I hope you choke.”

The lean man nodded gravely.  “Prosit,” he said.  But the fat one leaned back and laughed consumedly.

Hotchkiss finished a mental synopsis of his position, and put down his glass.  “Gentlemen,” he said pompously, “within five minutes the man you want will be here, a murderer caught in a net of evidence so fine that a mosquito could not get through.”

The detectives glanced at each other solemnly.  Had they not in their possession a sealskin bag containing a wallet and a bit of gold chain, which, by putting the crime on me, would leave a gap big enough for Sullivan himself to crawl through?

“Why don’t you say your little speech before Johnson brings the other man, Lawrence?” McKnight inquired.  “They won’t believe you, but it will help them to understand what is coming.”

“You understand, of course,” the lean man put in gravely, “that what you say may be used against you.”

“I’ll take the risk,” I answered impatiently.

It took some time to tell the story of my worse than useless trip to Pittsburg, and its sequel.  They listened gravely, without interruption.

“Mr. Hotchkiss here,” I finished, “believes that the man Sullivan, whom we are momentarily expecting, committed the crime.  Mr. McKnight is inclined to implicate Mrs. Conway, who stabbed Bronson and then herself last night.  As for myself, I am open to conviction.”

“I hope not,” said the stout detective quizzically.  And then Alison was announced.  My impulse to go out and meet her was forestalled by the detectives, who rose when I did.  McKnight, therefore, brought her in, and I met her at the door.

“I have put you to a great deal of trouble,” I said contritely, when I saw her glance around the room.  “I wish I had not—­”

“It is only right that I should come,” she replied, looking up at me.  “I am the unconscious cause of most of it, I am afraid.  Mrs. Dallas is going to wait in the outer office.”

I presented Hotchkiss and the two detectives, who eyed her with interest.  In her poise, her beauty, even in her gown, I fancy she represented a new type to them.  They remained standing until she sat down.

“I have brought the necklace,” she began, holding out a white-wrapped box, “as you asked me to.”

I passed it, unopened, to the detectives.  “The necklace from which was broken the fragment you found in the sealskin bag,” I explained.  “Miss West found it on the floor of the car, near lower ten.”

“When did you find it?” asked the lean detective, bending forward.

“In the morning, not long before the wreck.”