and rather a nice Angelica Kauffmann."
"It was the Fragonard miniature Mr. Van Vreck liked best," put in Constance. "It seems he painted only a few. And next, the Goya——"
"Good heavens! where is the Fragonard?" cried Dick, his eyes bulging behind his pince-nez. "Surely it was here——"
"Oh, surely, yes!" panted his wife. "It was never anywhere else."
For an instant they were stricken into silence, both staring at a blank space on the black velvet background where twenty-nine miniatures hung. There was no doubt about it when they had reviewed the rows of little painted faces. The Fragonard was gone.
"Stolen!" gasped Lady Annesley-Seton.
"Unless one of you, or some servant you trust with the key, is a somnambulist," said Knight. "I don't see how it would pay a thief to steal such a thing. It must be too well known. He couldn't dispose of it—that is if he weren't a collector himself; and even then he could never show it. But—by Jove!"
"What is it? What have you seen?" Annesley-Seton asked, sharply.
Knight pointed, without touching the cabinet. He had never come near enough to do that. "It looks to me as if a square bit of glass had been cut out on the side where the lost miniature must have hung," he said. "I can't be sure, from where I stand, because the cabinet is too close to the wall of the recess."
Dick Annesley-Seton thrust his arm into the space between green brocade and glass, then slipped his hand through a neatly cut aperture just big enough to admit its passage. With his hand in the square hole he could reach the spot where the miniature had hung, and could have taken it off the hook had it been there. But hook, as well as miniature, was missing.
"That settles it!" he exclaimed. "It is a theft, and a clever one! Strange we should find it out when I was demonstrating to you how much I wished it would happen. Hurrah! That miniature alone is insured against burglary for seven or eight hundred pounds. Nothing to what it's worth, but a lot to pay a premium on, with the rest of the things besides. I wish now I hadn't been so cheese-paring. You'll be witnesses, you two, of our discovery. I'm glad Connie and I weren't alone when we found it out. Something nasty might have been said."
"We'll back you up with pleasure," Knight replied. "What was the miniature like? I wonder if we saw it when we were here the other day, Anita? I remember these, but can't recall any other."
"Neither can I," returned Annesley. "But I am stupid about such things. We saw so many—and passed so quickly."
"I wonder if Paul Van Vreck was here in disguise among the tourists?" said Dick, beginning to laugh. "It would have been the one he'd have chosen if he couldn't grab the lot."
"Oh, surely no one in the crowd could have cut a piece of glass out of a cabinet and stolen a miniature without being seen!" Annesley cried.
"Dick is half in joke," Constance explained. "It would have been a miracle, yet the servants are above suspicion. Those horrid trustees never let me choose a new one without their interference. And, of course Dick didn't mean what he said about Mr. Van Vreck."
"Of course not. I understood that," Annesley excused herself, blushing lest she had appeared obtuse.
"All the same, to carry on the joke, let's go into the octagon room and see if the alleged Fragonard pictures have gone, too," said Annesley-Seton. He led the way, turning on more light in the adjoining room as he went; and, outdistancing the others, they heard him stammer, "Good Lord!" before they were near enough to see what he saw.
"They aren't gone?" shrieked his wife, hurrying after him.
"One of them is."
In an instant the three had grouped behind him, where he stood staring at an empty frame, between two others of the same pattern and size, charming old frames twelve or fourteen inches square, within whose boundaries of carved and gilded wood, nymphs held hands and danced.
"Are we dreaming this?" gasped Constance.
"Thank Heaven we're not!" the husband answered. "The two paintings are on wood, you see. So was the missing one. Someone has simply unfastened it from the frame, and trusted to this being a dark, out-of-the-way corner, not to have the theft noticed for hours or maybe days. By all that's wonderful, here's another insurance haul for me! What about the jade Buddha in the Chinese room?"
They rushed back into the green drawing room, and so to the beautiful Chinese room beyond, with its priceless lacquer tables and cabinets. In one of these latter a collection of exquisite jade was gathered together.
And the Buddha which Paul Van Vreck had coveted was gone!
Chapter XI.
Annesley Remembers
There was great excitement for the next few days at Valley House and throughout the neighbourhood, for the Annesley-Setons made no secret of the robbery, and the affair got into the papers, not only the local ones, but the London dailies.
Two of the latter sent representatives, to whom Lord Annesley-Seton granted interviews. Something he said attracted the reporters' attention to Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith, who had been dining at Valley House on the evening when the theft was discovered, and Knight was begged for an interview.
He was asked if he had formed an opinion as to the disappearance of the three heirlooms, and whether he knew personally Mr. Paul Van Vreck, the American collector and retired head of the famous firm of jewellers, who had wished to buy the vanished treasures.
Having spent most of his life in America, Knight had the theory that unless you wished to be misrepresented, the only safe thing was to let yourself be interviewed. He was accordingly so good-natured and interesting that the reporters were delighted with him. If he had been wishing for a wide advertisement of his personality, his possessions, and his plans, he could not have chosen a surer way of getting it.
The two newspapers which had undertaken to boom the "Valley House Heirloom Theft" had almost limitless circulations. One of them possessed a Continental edition, and the other was immensely popular because of its topical illustrations.
Snapshots, not so unflattering as usual, were obtained of the young Anglo-American millionaire and his bride, as they started away from the Knowle Hotel in their motor, or as they walked in the garden. Though Knight had disclaimed any personal acquaintance with the great Paul Van Vreck, he was able to state that Mr. Van Vreck had been convalescing at Palm Beach, in Florida, at the time of the robbery. He had had an attack of pneumonia in the autumn, and instead of travelling in his yacht to Egypt, as he generally did travel early in the winter, he had been ordered by his doctors to be satisfied with a "place in the sun" nearer home.
Everyone in America knew this, Knight explained, and everyone in England might know it also, unless it had been forgotten. If Mr. Van Vreck were well enough to take an interest in the papers, he was sure to be amused by the coincidence that the things stolen from Valley House were among those he had wanted to buy.
Knight thought, however, that even if the clever thief or thieves had heard of Van Vreck's whim, no attempt would be made to dispose of the spoil to him. The elderly millionaire, though one of the most eccentric men living, was known as the soul of honour.
The relationship between young Mrs. Nelson Smith and Lord Annesley-Seton was touched upon in the papers; and though it was irrelevant to the subject in hand, mention was made of the Nelson Smiths' plan to live in London.
This gave Constance her chance. At an impromptu luncheon at the Knowle Hotel, before the intended dinner party at Valley House, she referred to the interest Society would begin to take in this "romantic couple."
"Everybody will have fallen in love with you already," she said, "from those snapshots in the Looking Glass. They make you both look such darlings—though