“I—­of course I expected it,” he said.  “But—­Mrs. Klopton said over the telephone that you had brought home a grip and I hoped —­well, Lord knows we ought not to complain.  You’re here, damaged, but here.”  He lifted his glass.  “Happy days, old man!”

“If you will give me that black bottle and a teaspoon, I’ll drink that in arnica, or whatever the stuff is; Rich,—­the notes were gone before the wreck!”

He wheeled and stared at me, the bottle in his hand.  “Lost, strayed or stolen?” he queried with forced lightness.

“Stolen, although I believe the theft was incidental to something else.”

Mrs. Klopton came in at that moment, with an eggnog in her hand.  She glanced at the clock, and, without addressing any one in particular, she intimated that it was time for self-respecting folks to be at home in bed.  McKnight, who could never resist a fling at her back, spoke to me in a stage whisper.

“Is she talking still? or again?” he asked, just before the door closed.  There was a second’s indecision with the knob, then, judging discretion the better part, Mrs. Klopton went away.

“Now, then,” McKnight said, settling himself in a chair beside the bed, “spit it out.  Not the wreck—­I know all I want about that.  But the theft.  I can tell you beforehand that it was a woman.”

I had crawled painfully out of bed, and was in the act of pouring the egg-nog down the pipe of the washstand.  I paused, with the glass in the air.

“A woman!” I repeated, startled.  “What makes you think that?”

“You don’t know the first principles of a good detective yarn,” he said scornfully.  “Of course, it was the woman in the empty house next door.  You said it was brass pipes, you will remember.  Well —­on with the dance:  let joy be unconfined.”

So I told the story; I had told it so many times that day that I did it automatically.  And I told about the girl with the bronze hair, and my suspicions.  But I did not mention Alison West.  McKnight listened to the end without interruption.  When I had finished he drew a long breath.

“Well!” he said.  “That’s something of a mess, isn’t it?  If you can only prove your mild and child-like disposition, they couldn’t hold you for the murder—­which is a regular ten-twent-thirt crime, anyhow.  But the notes—­that’s different.  They are not burned, anyhow.  Your man wasn’t on the train—­therefore, he wasn’t in the wreck.  If he didn’t know what he was taking, as you seem to think, he probably reads the papers, and unless he is a fathead, he’s awake by this time to what he’s got.  He’ll try to sell them to Bronson, probably.”

“Or to us,” I put in.

We said nothing for a few minutes.  McKnight smoked a cigarette and stared at a photograph of Candida over the mantel.  Candida is the best pony for a heavy mount in seven states.

“I didn’t go to Richmond,” he observed finally.  The remark followed my own thoughts so closely that I started.  “Miss West is not home yet from Seal Harbor.”