"What do you think about it?"
"It is much too early in the case for me to express an opinion. But there are one or two questions that I should like to ask you."
"Do so, by all means. It was at my request that you were called in."
"At your request?"
"Yes; I talked with Horace about it, and at last we agreed to ask you to take the case. He didn't believe in it at first, for he did not want to let anybody into our family secrets."
She glanced at her father as she spoke. It was evident that the family was a good deal ashamed of Colonel Richmond's spiritualistic delusions and wanted to keep quiet about them.
"I talked Horace into it after a while," Mrs. Pond continued, "and at last he became as enthusiastic as myself. We know that you will find the thief."
"Thank you," responded Nick. "There is one point which seems peculiar to me. After you had been robbed once, why did you continue to leave the jewels unwatched in the very place from which one of them had previously been taken?"
"I insisted upon it," said Colonel Richmond. "I told my daughter that she must make no change in her habit of wearing or caring for my aunt's jewels. I wished to show that we were not foolishly trying to hide them from the eye of a spirit, but that we wished to learn the desire of my departed aunt as soon as possible."
"It was by your order, then," said Nick, "that your daughter continued to put the jewels on her dressing-table when she laid them aside for any reason?"
"It was."
"I have just left some of them there now," said Mrs. Pond. "I went to my room after my ride, and took off a light cloak which was fastened with three pins, each having a diamond in its head. I stuck them all into a cushion on that dressing-table."
"Is the room locked?" asked Nick.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Pond, and she produced the key of the door which opened from the hall above.
"Will you allow me to go up there now?"
"Certainly."
She handed the key to Nick.
He took it and walked out of the parlor.
Nick had already formed a sort of working theory in the case. He scarcely believed that it would hold water, but it would do for a starter.
The most probable explanation that had come to him was that Mrs. Pond had not really been robbed at all.
It might be that she had some motive for making these articles vanish.
Perhaps she had some need of money, and was secretly selling them against the wish of her husband and her father.
So, when Nick took that key and went toward that room he did not expect to find the three diamond pins in the position described by the lady.
He found the door locked, and he opened it by means of the key. Then he locked it behind him, leaving the key in the lock.
He turned at once to a dressing-table.
The three pins were there, just as Mrs. Pond had said.
Nick laughed softly to himself.
"That looks bad for my first shot at this queer case," he said; "but perhaps she didn't dare work the game while I was in the house."
He glanced out of the window of the room.
Two servants were in the yard. They seemed to be explaining the robberies to a new driver of a groceryman's wagon, for they had one of his arms apiece, and were pointing to the window.
Nick walked into the sitting-room, and spent some minutes examining the walls, and especially the door leading toward the old part of the house.
He found nothing at all to reward his search. There absolutely was no secret entrance.
The detective decided that nothing further could be done in that room.
He walked toward the other.
To his astonishment he found that the door had been closed while he had been busy with his investigations.
He sprang against it.
The door yielded a little, and yet he could not open it.
Some person stronger than he seemed to be holding it on the other side.
He drew back for a spring. That door would have gone to splinters if it had stood in his way again.
Instead, it swung open the instant he touched it, and the force of his lunge took him nearly to the middle of the room.
In an instant he was on guard, but he saw no one.
The room was quiet, and it was empty.
The door into the hall was locked as he had left it.
All was the same, except that on the dressing-table was the cushion bearing two diamond pins instead of three.
The robbery had been done, as one might say, under the nose of the greatest detective in the world.
"Well, this takes my breath away," said Nick to himself. "It's the nerviest challenge that ever was sprung on me."
CHAPTER III.
HOW NICK FOUND THE JEWELS.
It certainly looked like sheer recklessness for this thief, whoever he might be, to play his game on Nick almost at the very moment when the great detective appeared upon the scene.