said that he was employed by Spear, Hoover & Camp, stock brokers, that she had a putrid headache, and that she hoped I would excuse her now as she knew I couldn't have any more questions to ask.
Without waiting for my answer, she turned and went out of the room. Her ears, I noticed, were without lobes and peculiarly pointed at the tops.
Leggett and his wife took me up to the laboratory, a large room that occupied most of the third story. Charts were hung here and there between the windows on the white-washed walls. The wooden floor was uncovered. An X-ray machine—or something similar—four or five smaller machines, a small forge, a large sink, a large zinc table, some smaller porcelain ones, stands, racks of glassware, siphon-shaped metal tanks—that sort of stuff filled the room.
The cabinet from which the diamonds had been taken was a green-painted steel affair of six drawers, all locking together. The second drawer from the top—the one the diamonds had been in—was open. Its edge was dented where a jimmy or chisel had been forced between it and the frame. The other drawers were still locked.
From the laboratory we went downstairs, through a room where the mulatto girl was walking around behind a vacuum cleaner, and into the kitchen. The back door and its frame were marked much as the cabinet had been, the same tool apparently having been used on it.
When I had finished looking at the door I took the diamond I had found out of my pocket and showed it to the Leggetts, asking:
"Is this one of them?"
Leggett picked it up with forefinger and thumb, held it up to the light, turned it from side to side, and said:
"Yes. It has that cloudy spot down at the culet. Where did you get it?"
"Out front, in the grass. I saw it when I came up the walk."
"Ah, where our burglar dropped it in his hurried departure."
I said I doubted it.
Leggett pulled his brows together, looked at me with smaller eyes, asking harshly:
"What do you mean?"
"I think it was planted there," I explained. "Your burglar knew exactly which drawer to go to, and he didn't waste any time on anything else. Somebody who—"
Mrs. Leggett put a hand on my forearm and said earnestly:
"No, no. You're thinking of Minnie. You are mistaken, I assure you. She—"
Minnie came to the door, still holding the vacuum cleaner, and began to cry that she was an honest girl, and nobody had any right to accuse her of anything, and they could search her and her room if they wanted to, and just because she was a colored girl was no reason, and so on and so on. Not all of it could be made out, because the vacuum cleaner was still humming in her hand and she sobbed while she talked. Tears say down her cheeks.
Mrs, Leggett went to her, patted her shoulder, saying: "There, there, don't cry. I know you hadn't anything to do with it. Nobody thinks you had. There, there." Presently she got the girl's tears turned off and sent her upstairs.
Leggett sat on a corner of the kitchen table and asked: "You suspect someone in this house?"
"Somebody who's been in it."
"Whom?"
"Nobody yet."
"That"—he smiled, showing white teeth almost as small his daughter's—"means everybody—all of us."
"Let's go out and look at the lawn," I suggested——. "If we find any more diamonds I'll admit I'm mistaken about this one being planted."
Half-way through the house, as we went toward the front door, we met Minnie Hershey, in a tan coat and vio-
