Delaying the inevitable moment when he must confess to these people that there wasn’t going to be any performance, he inspected carefully the strings that led to Tim. They were all in order. He fiddled around a little longer and he was conscious of a murmur of faint impatience from the guests.
He felt the back of his neck getting warm.
Dereck’s smooth voice drifted to him. “Our puppeteer seems to be having trouble. Out of puppies, I presume.”
This didn’t help any.
Finally he quit stalling. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth and then get the hell out of here. He turned and faced the roomful of expectant guests.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but—”
He got no farther for at that instant the lights suddenly went out and the room was plunged into darkness. There was a startled scream from a girl and a babble of men’s voices, over which the commanding tones of the colonel rode easily.
“Don’t be alarmed!” he bellowed, in a voice which would have terrified the stoutest heart. “The lights will be on in a moment.”
There was an uneasy rustle of movement in the crowd of guests and excited whispers flitted through the darkness.
Then from the center of the room there was a frightened gasp and a voice cried, “Someone’s stolen my necklace!”
Larry recognized the voice as Gloria’s.
“Somebody turn those damn lights on,” he shouted. He moved as quickly as he could through the darkness toward the sound of her voice. Someone collided with him, but before Larry could recognize the dim shape, the fellow had slipped past and was gone.
Then the lights went on again, as suddenly as they had gone out, and the roomful of guests stared at one another, blinking in the bright illumination.
Larry was standing directly in front of Gloria and he saw that her hands pressed against her throat and that the diamond pendant was gone. She was staring at him with wide eyes, dark and troubled against the whiteness of her face.
The colonel charged into the scene at that moment and with him was a dapper little man in a tuxedo.
“Are you all right, child?” the colonel demanded.
“Y-yes, I’m all right,” Gloria said slowly. She was still staring at Larry. “The moment the lights went out someone stepped up to me. I felt his hand at my throat for a second — and then my diamond pendant was gone.”
The dapper little man stepped forward. His eyes were sharp and hard.
“I’m representing the Allied Insurance Company, Miss Manners. I was sent here when the company learned that you were intending to wear your diamond tonight.” He looked at her keenly. “Why did you say you felt ‘his’ hand at your throat. Did you recognize the thief as a man?”
Gloria nodded slowly. She turned her eyes away from Larry.
“I know it was a man,” she said.
“Did you recognize him?” the insurance detective asked.
Gloria shook her head. “No.” She said the one word in a low voice.
Larry happened to glance through the arched doors that led to the hallway and he noticed a glaringly conspicuous figure moving toward the front door.
The conspicuous figure was Buggy Rafferty and he was tiptoeing toward the door as if he were walking on eggs. No one else had seen him.
“Just a minute, Buggy,” Larry said in a loud, clear voice.
Buggy halted in mid-step, his hand on the doorknob.
Larry nudged the insurance detective. “There’s your man,” he said.
Buggy turned slowly and faced the roomful of guests. His red, wrinkled face wore a look of faint surprise.
“Did someone call me?” he asked innocently.
The insurance detective looked uncertainly from Larry to Buggy.
“You’d better come in here,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Buggy came slowly into the room twisting his hat in his hands.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked. His little eyes were wide with innocent surprise. Larry began to feel slightly uneasy.
“Miss Manners’ necklace has been stolen,” the detective said.
“You don’t say so!” Buggy said indignantly. He shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s too bad.”
Larry said, “You can stop acting innocent, Buggy. Hand over the necklace.”
Buggy looked at him as if he hadn’t heard aright.
“What an awful thing to say, Mr. Temple,” he said sadly. “I—”
“Search him!” Larry said. But he was beginning to feel that something was radically wrong. And a few minutes later, when the detective had gone through Buggy’s pockets and found nothing — he knew that something was wrong.
The detective looked at Larry with unconcealed irritation.
“You had better be more careful with your accusations,” he said sharply.
Dereck moved into the picture then, shoving Larry slightly as he stepped into the circle surrounding Gloria.
“Our puppeteer must be forgiven,” he said ironically. “The exciting nature of his work keeps him in a rather unbalanced state. I have a suggestion to make that should straighten this mess out without any more delay. No one has left the room since the lights went on. Therefore I propose that we search those present. I, for one, am willing.”
There was a general murmur of assent from the guests.
“A capital idea,” the colonel said. He cleared his throat importantly. “And I insist that I be searched first.”
No one cared to dispute this honor with him, and the detective searched him quickly and deftly. Nothing was found.
“You’re okay,” the detective said.
“I thank you, sir,” the colonel said, with the air of a man who had been exonerated in a dramatic jury trial.
The detective then began searching the others, and the colonel moved along the line with him, ready to pounce on the thief if he should be revealed.
Buggy was standing next to Larry.
“Nice little double-cross, chum,” he said from the corner of his mouth.
“I would rather not discuss the matter,” Larry said. His thoughts were on the missing diamond. If Buggy didn’t have it on his person, he must have hidden it somewhere. But where? He would have to find out before Buggy disappeared with a clean bill of health — and the diamond.
The colonel and the detective would be searching them in a few moments now. They were only two guests away from Buggy and Larry.
Larry was in a hurry to get the thing over with. Impatiently he shoved his hands into his coat pocket. There was a round hard object in his right pocket. His fingers closed around it slowly.
His face began to get hot. There was suddenly a cold vacuum where his stomach should have been. Cautiously he removed his hand from the pocket and peeked at the object nestling in his fingers.
And he almost fainted on the spot.
For the object in his hand was Gloria’s pendant necklace!
How the diamond had gotten there, he couldn’t imagine; but he knew that this was not the time to speculate on such academic questions. The colonel and the detective were searching Buggy now and in an instant they would be going through his pockets.
He had to get rid of the diamond and he didn’t have a second to lose. While he was casting about feverishly in his mind for something more practical than popping the damned thing into his mouth, he felt a tug on his trouser leg.
Glancing down, he saw the tiny figure of the puppet, Tim, standing next to his shoe peering up at him. Larry shoved him away impatiently. This was no time for irrelevancies. And anything not definitely relating to the speedy disposition of that incriminating diamond was damned irrelevant.