Doctor Murray saw it, too, and his eyes were riveted on it, as though instantly he saw its significance.

“What do you think—­Jack as sick as a dog, and robbed, too, and yet Murray says I oughtn’t to see him!” complained Lewis, for the moment oblivious to the fact that all our eyes were riveted on the spangle between Kennedy’s fingers.  And then, slowly it seemed to dawn on him what it was.  “Madeline’s!” he exclaimed, quickly.  “So Mina did tear it, after all, when she stepped on the train.”

Kennedy watched the faces before us keenly.  No one said anything.  It was evident that some such incident had happened.  But had Lewis, with a quick flash of genius, sought to cover up something, protect somebody?

Miss Grey was evidently anxious to transfer the scene at least to the living-room, away from the sick-room, and Kennedy, seeing it, fell in with the idea.

“Looks to me as though this robbery was an inside affair,” remarked Lewis, as we all stood for a moment in the living-room.  “Do you suppose one of the servants could have been ‘planted’ for the purpose of pulling it off?”

The idea was plausible enough.  Yet, plausible as the suggestion might seem, it took no account of the other circumstances of the case.  I could not believe that the illness of Mansfield was merely an unfortunate coincidence.

Fleming Lewis’s unguarded and blunt tendency to blurt out whatever seemed uppermost in his mind soon became a study to me as we talked together in the living-room.  I could not quite make out whether it was studied and astute or whether it was merely the natural exuberance of youth.  There was certainly some sort of enmity between him and the doctor, which the remark about the spangle seemed to fan into a flame.

Miss Grey manoeuvered tactfully, however, to prevent a scene.  And, after an interchange of remarks that threw more heat than light on the matter, Kennedy and I followed Lewis out to the elevator, with a parting promise to keep in touch with Miss Grey.

“What do you think of the spangle?” I queried of Craig as Lewis bade us a hasty good-by and climbed into his car at the street-entrance.  “Is it a clue or a stall?”

“That remains to be seen,” he replied, noncommittally.  “Just now the thing that interests me most is what I can accomplish at the laboratory in the way of finding out what is the matter with Mansfield.”

While Kennedy was busy with the various solutions which he made of the contents of the ramekins that had held the mushrooms, I wandered over to the university library and waded through several volumes on fungi without learning anything of value.  Finally, knowing that Kennedy would probably be busy for some time, and that all I should get for my pains by questioning him would be monosyllabic grunts until he was quite convinced that he was on the trail of something, I determined to run into the up-town office of the Star and talk over the affair as well as I could without violating what I felt had been given us in confidence.