The owner of the voice hung up the receiver with a snap, and left me pondering.  It seemed to me that Mr. Ladley had been very reckless.  Did he expect any one to believe that Jennie Brice had gone for a vacation without notifying the theater?  Especially when she was to rehearse that week?  I thought it curious, to say the least.  I went back and told Mr. Holcombe, who put it down in his note-book, and together we went to the Ladleys’ room.

The room was in better order than usual, as I have said.  The bed was made—­which was out of the ordinary, for Jennie Brice never made a bed—­but made the way a man makes one, with the blankets wrinkled and crooked beneath, and the white counterpane pulled smoothly over the top, showing every lump beneath.  I showed Mr. Holcombe the splasher, dotted with ink as usual.

“I’ll take it off and soak it in milk,” I said.  “It’s his fountain pen; when the ink doesn’t run, he shakes it, and—­”

“Where’s the clock?” said Mr. Holcombe, stopping in front of the mantel with his note-book in his hand.

“The clock?”

I turned and looked.  My onyx clock was gone from the mantel-shelf.

Perhaps it seems strange, but from the moment I missed that clock my rage at Mr. Ladley increased to a fury.  It was all I had had left of my former gentility.  When times were hard and I got behind with the rent, as happened now and then, more than once I’d been tempted to sell the clock, or to pawn it.  But I had never done it.  Its ticking had kept me company on many a lonely night, and its elegance had helped me to keep my pride and to retain the respect of my neighbors.  For in the flood district onyx clocks are not plentiful.  Mrs. Bryan, the saloon-keeper’s wife, had one, and I had another.  That is, I had had.

I stood staring at the mark in the dust of the mantel-shelf, which Mr. Holcombe was measuring with a pocket tape-measure.

“You are sure you didn’t take it away yourself, Mrs. Pitman?” he asked.

“Sure?  Why, I could hardly lift it,” I said.

He was looking carefully at the oblong of dust where the clock had stood.  “The key is gone, too,” he said, busily making entries in his note-book.  “What was the maker’s name?”

“Why, I don’t think I ever noticed.”

He turned to me angrily.  “Why didn’t you notice?” he snapped.  “Good God, woman, do you only use your eyes to cry with?  How can you wind a clock, time after time, and not know the maker’s name?  It proves my contention:  the average witness is totally unreliable.”

“Not at all,” I snapped, “I am ordinarily both accurate and observing.”

“Indeed!” he said, putting his hands behind him.  “Then perhaps you can tell me the color of the pencil I have been writing with.”

“Certainly.  Red.”  Most pencils are red, and I thought this was safe.

But he held his right hand out with a flourish.  “I’ve been writing with a fountain pen,” he said in deep disgust, and turned his back on me.