“I was dressing, and was in my underclothes, so it took me a minute, I should say, to get a pair of pantaloons on.

“Then I ran out into the hall and down the stairs.  At the same moment my uncle ran up from the ground floor.

“I mention these facts, because they seem to me to be important.  You see, we approached that room by two ways—­by the only two ways except that by which Mrs. Pond came.

“Just as I got to the hall door of her bed-room she opened it, and fell into my arms in a faint.

“She lost consciousness only for a moment, and, on coming to herself, she cried out that a thief had been in her room.

“By this time there were three or four servants in the hall below.  One of them staid there by my uncle’s orders.  The others went outside and made a circuit of the house.

“We led Mrs. Pond back into her room, and she pointed to her dressing-table.

“There lay two or three rings and a pin, but the most valuable ring that she had put there was gone.

“It was a queer, old-fashioned ring in the form of a snake, and in its mouth was a ruby worth about two hundred and fifty dollars.  The eyes were made of small diamonds.

“She declared that she had left the ring there.  She told us how the door between the two rooms had closed.

“It appears that after she had struggled to open it for several minutes it suddenly yielded, and she almost fell into the room.

“Of course, she expected to rush straight upon the thief.  He had been holding the door, and naturally he couldn’t have gone far after releasing it.

“She was inside just as soon as the pressure on the other side was removed.  But the room was empty.

“She thought of her jewels at once.  She rushed to her dressing-table, and instantly missed the ruby ring.

“Now, that’s all there is to it.  We hunted high and low for the thief, and did not find a trace of him.

“How did he get away?  That’s where I give up the riddle.  The door in the hall was locked on the inside, and practically guarded by my uncle and myself.  At the other door stood Mrs. Pond.

“There is only one window.  It looks out on a sort of court with the house on three sides of it.

“A man with a wagon was almost under the window all the time.  He was delivering groceries to the cook.

“It’s absurd to suppose that anybody got in or out by that window.  No thief would have been fool enough to try it at that time of day, and, as I’ve told you, there were two persons who would have been perfectly sure to see him if he had.  And he couldn’t have got in or out without a ladder.

“I admit that it looked very queer.  What do you make of it, Mr. Carter?”

“Are you sure the ring was really taken?  Couldn’t she have been mistaken about it?”

“That’s the idea that occurred to me.  But it happens that when Mrs. Pond came back from the drive my uncle banded her out of the carriage, and he distinctly remembers seeing the ring on her finger.