“Yes,” replied Nestor, “I had an idea the interests would try to do a little stealing on their own hook.”
“But if they have secured the papers – ”
The lieutenant hesitated, and Nestor went on:
“If they have secured the papers, they know no more now than they did before. They are not out after information concerning their own plots. They are trying to reduce the outside supply of knowledge about their movements.”
“There was nothing said about papers being stolen, was there?” asked the lieutenant. “Perhaps the necklace really was the point of attack.”
Nestor turned to George Tolford.
“Do you know where Frank kept his necklace?” he asked.
“Sure I do,” was the quick reply. “He kept it in a hinky-dinky little safe up in his room. I told him he was foolish to take such a risk with it.”
“Did he keep the safe locked?”
“Locked! Not half the time. He would rush in there, open it up, and then run all over the house, leaving the door swinging.”
Nestor and the lieutenant now left the room, after asking the boys to wait there for a short time. Once out on the street, the lieutenant remarked:
“If the necklace was kept in Frank’s room, why did the thief take the pains to chloroform Mr. Shaw, who must have been in his own room?”
Nestor shrugged his shoulders for reply. That was a point he had already considered. Again the lieutenant asked a question:
“If the papers had been taken, wouldn’t that have been mentioned the very first thing? Wouldn’t Mr. Shaw think first of recovering them?”
“I don’t know,” replied Nestor. “The thing for us to do now is to find out who it was that entered the Shaw house to-night, and what was taken besides the necklace.”
CHAPTER III.
HOW THE TRICK WAS TURNED
Leaving the boys in the luxurious clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, and promising to keep them posted as to the situation by ’phone, Lieutenant Gordon and Ned Nestor hastened in the direction of the Shaw residence, only three blocks away. A surprise awaited them at the Shaw door.
When they mounted the marble steps to the front portal they were astonished to see Jimmie McGraw standing in the shadow of a column, waiting for them with a grin on his face. He pushed the electric button for admittance as soon as they reached his side.
“What are you doing here?” demanded the lieutenant, trying hard to appear angry with the boy.
“Why, I just come over to tell Frank – ”
“Never mind that now,” said the lieutenant, interrupting. “If this is the way you obey orders you can’t go to the Canal Zone with me.”
“Well, you see,” Jimmie began, in a contrite tone, “I thought of something, after you left, that I wanted to say to Frank, and I knew he’d have asked for me if he’d ’a’ thought of it, so I just run over.”
“What was it you wanted to say to Frank?” asked the lieutenant, with a smile in Ned’s direction. The persistence of the boy pleased him, to say the least.
Just then the door was opened, saving Jimmie the exertion of manufacturing a smooth tale to tell the lieutenant, and the three entered the great hall of the fine residence, where they found Frank awaiting them.
“I was afraid you’d both left the clubroom and couldn’t be found,” he cried, as he took his friends by the hand. “Come right up to my room, and I’ll show you just how the thieves got the emerald necklace.”
“Perhaps we ought to see your father first,” Lieutenant Gordon suggested, thinking of something much more important, to him at least, than the bauble.
“Father is with Doctor Benson just now,” was the reply.
“Was he seriously injured?” asked Nestor, anxiously.
“Not a bit of it,” was the reply. “They just sneaked up behind him and stuffed a big handkerchief soaked with chloroform into his face. The drug knocked him out for a short time, but he is all right now. He told me to show you my room as soon as you came, and then to take you to him.”
“Who else is in the house?” asked Nestor.
“No one but Doctor Benson and the servants,” was the reply.
“Then the police have not been called?”
“No, indeed. I asked father to wait until you two came. I don’t take much stock in the cheap plain clothes men they send about on robbery cases. But come on up to my room, and I’ll show you what a sucker I am.”
“If I had said that,” Jimmie put in, “you’d ’a’ handed me one.”
“So Jimmie is on the case too,” laughed Frank. “Well, son, there’s money in it for the man who restores my emerald necklace, which I’m sure to get back, in the end. Why, that necklace has been stolen about a thousand times, and has always been restored to the rightful owner. Once it was found in the heart of Africa, in the kinky hair of a native. There’s blood on it, too, for men have been killed trying to steal it, and trying to prevent its being stolen. It’s the most valuable necklace in the world.”
The boy mounted the staircase as he spoke, leading the others to his room, which was at the front of the house on the second floor, directly over the apartment used by his father as a library, or study. The suite occupied by the boy was elegantly furnished, the only thing which marred the tasty arrangement of the place being a steel safe which stood between the two front windows of the sitting room.
“There,” said Frank, closing the door of the room behind the little party, “they got the necklace out of that safe.”
“How did they open it?” asked the lieutenant, and Jimmie laughed.
“Frank never closed a door in his life,” the boy said.
“Was the safe open?” asked Lieutenant Gordon.
“Yes,” was the reply, “it was open. I had just been there to get some money when I heard a scrap going on in the corridor and rushed out, leaving the door open, like a sucker. The necklace was taken while I was gone.”
“Anything else taken?” asked Ned.
“Not a thing. Oh, I guess the thief got a couple of dollars there was in the cash drawer, but nothing else was disturbed.”
“How long was he in the room?” asked the lieutenant.
“Oh, perhaps fifteen minutes. What I mean is that it must have been about that length of time before I came back here. You see, when I got out into the hall, Pedro, that’s one of Dad’s pet servants, was scrapping with two pirate-looking fellows at the head of the stairs. One of them had him by the throat when I came up.”
“And they both got away?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes, they both got away. They turned and ran down stairs when I came up and bolted out of the front door, just as if some one stood there holding it open for them.”
“Was the night-lock on?”
“Certainly; it always is at night.”
“Couldn’t anybody open it from the inside, whether familiar with the house or not?” asked Ned.
“No; for the night-bolt is controlled by an electric button, which you have to push before it can be moved from the inside, so no one not familiar with the house could have opened it.”
Nestor glanced at the lieutenant with a question in his eyes, and the officer nodded. There was little doubt in the mind of either that the crime had been planned by some one thoroughly conversant with the premises. It was at least certain that exit had been made easy for the thieves.
“You spent this fifteen minutes, after the flight