Slight and fairy-like in figure, with an air of modest reserve more in keeping with her youth and dainty dimpling beauty than with her errand, her appearance produced an astonishment none of which the gentlemen were able to disguise.  This the clever detective, with a genius for social problems and odd elusive cases!  This darling of the ball-room in satin and pearls!  Mr. Spielhagen glanced at Mr. Cornell, and Mr. Cornell at Mr. Spielhagen, and both at Mr. Upjohn, in very evident distrust.  As for Violet, she had eyes only for Mr. Van Broecklyn who stood before her in a surprise equal to that of the others but with more restraint in its expression.

She was not disappointed in him.  She had expected to see a man, reserved almost to the point of austerity.  And she found his first look even more awe-compelling than her imagination had pictured; so much so indeed, that her resolution faltered, and she took a quick step backward; which seeing, he smiled and her heart and hopes grew warm again.  That he could smile, and smile with absolute sweetness, was her great comfort when later—­But I am introducing you too hurriedly to the catastrophe.  There is much to be told first.

I pass over the preliminaries, and come at once to the moment when Violet, having listened to a repetition of the full facts, stood with downcast eyes before these gentlemen, complaining in some alarm to herself:  “They expect me to tell them now and without further search or parley just where this missing page is.  I shall have to balk that expectation without losing their confidence.  But how?”

Summoning up her courage and meeting each inquiring eye with a look which seemed to carry a different message to each, she remarked very quietly: 

“This is not a matter to guess at.  I must have time and I must look a little deeper into the facts just given me.  I presume that the table I see over there is the one upon which Mr. Upjohn laid the manuscript during Mr. Spielhagen’s unconsciousness.”

All nodded.

“Is it—­I mean the table—­in the same condition it was then?  Has nothing been taken from it except the manuscript?”

“Nothing.”

“Then the missing page is not there,” she smiled, pointing to its bare top.  A pause, during which she stood with her gaze fixed on the floor before her.  She was thinking and thinking hard.

Suddenly she came to a decision.  Addressing Mr. Upjohn she asked if he were quite sure that in taking the manuscript from Mr. Spielhagen’s hand he had neither disarranged nor dropped one of its pages.

The answer was unequivocal.

“Then,” she declared, with quiet assurance and a steady meeting with her own of every eye, “as the thirteenth page was not found among the others when they were taken from this table, nor on the persons of either Mr. Cornell or Mr. Spielhagen, it is still in that inner room.”

“Impossible!” came from every lip, each in a different tone.  “That room is absolutely empty.”