McKnight went under protest.  “I haven’t much time,” he said, looking at his watch.  “I’m to meet Mrs. West and Alison at one.  I want you to know them, Lollie.  You would like the mother.”

“Why not the daughter?” I inquired.  I touched the little gold bag under the pillow.

“Well,” he said judicially, “you’ve always declared against the immaturity and romantic nonsense of very young women—­”

“I never said anything of the sort,” I retorted furiously.

“‘There is more satisfaction to be had out of a good saddle horse!’” he quoted me. “’More excitement out of a polo pony, and as for the eternal matrimonial chase, give me instead a good stubble, a fox, some decent hounds and a hunter, and I’ll show you the real joys of the chase!’”

“For Heaven’s sake, go down to the telephone, you make my head ache,” I said savagely.

I hardly know what prompted me to take out the gold purse and look at it.  It was an imbecile thing to do—­call it impulse, sentimentality, what you wish.  I brought it out, one eye on the door, for Mrs. Klopton has a ready eye and a noiseless shoe.  But the house was quiet.  Down-stairs McKnight was flirting with the telephone central and there was an odor of boneset tea in the air.  I think Mrs. Klopton was fascinated out of her theories by the “boneset” in connection with the fractured arm.

Anyhow, I held up the bag and looked at it.  It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane—­some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance —­and a necklace.  I drew myself up slowly and stared at the necklace.

It was one of the semi-barbaric affairs that women are wearing now, a heavy pendant of gold chains and carved cameos, swung from a thin neck chain of the same metal.  The necklace was broken:  in three places the links were pulled apart and the cameos swung loose and partly detached.  But it was the supporting chain that held my eye and fascinated with its sinister suggestion.  Three inches of it had been snapped off, and as well as I knew anything on earth, I knew that the bit of chain that the amateur detective had found, blood-stain and all, belonged just there.

And there was no one I could talk to about it, no one to tell me how hideously absurd it was, no one to give me a slap and tell me there are tons of fine gold chains made every year, or to point out the long arm of coincidence!

With my one useful hand I fumbled the things back into the bag and thrust it deep out of sight among the pillows.  Then I lay back in a cold perspiration.  What connection had Alison West with this crime?  Why had she stared so at the gun-metal cigarette case that morning on the train?  What had alarmed her so at the farm-house?  What had she taken back to the gate?  Why did she wish she had not escaped from the wreck?  And last, in Heaven’s name, how did a part of her necklace become torn off and covered with blood?