“She screamed, and Horace and I came running to her room.  We searched it thoroughly.

“There was nobody there.  The door between the bedroom and the sitting-room was open, but the other door of the sitting-room, which opens into the old portion of the house, was locked and bolted on the inside.

“Now, I submit to you, Mr. Carter, whether in that case any other way of entrance or exit was possible except by the windows.”

“I’m bound to admit,” responded Nick, “that if the doors were in the condition you describe, no person could have entered or left those rooms except by the windows.”

“Well, it had been raining hard, and the ground was soft.  We looked carefully under all the windows.

“There was no sign of a footprint, and nobody could have walked there without making tracks.  Oh, it is clear enough!  Why do we waste your time in a search for invisible spirits of the dead?”

He rambled on in this way for several minutes, and Nick did not try to stop him.

The colonel was at last interrupted, however, by the entrance of his daughter.

Mrs. Pond had been out driving.  She learned, on her return, that a stranger had come to the house, and she hurried into the parlor, suspecting who was there.

“I am delighted to see you, Mr. Carter,” she exclaimed.  “You will clear up this abominable mystery and relieve my father’s mind from these delusions.”

“Then you do not share his opinions,” said Nick.

Mrs. Pond laughed nervously.

“No, indeed,” she said, “and yet I must admit that I am quite unable to explain the facts.  I suppose you have heard the story?”

“Yes.”

“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.”