thief left a match on the dressing-table when he took my poor little
brooch!'"

Hewitt nodded. "Yes," he said. "A spent match, of course?"

"Yes, of course, a spent match. She noticed it lying close by the
pin-cushion, but threw it away without mentioning the circumstance. Still,
it seemed rather curious to me that a match should be lit and dropped, in
each case, on the dressing-cover an inch from where the article was taken.
I mentioned it to Lloyd when I got back, and he agreed that it seemed
significant."

"Scarcely," said Hewitt, shaking his head. "Scarcely, so far, to be called
significant, although worth following up. Everybody uses matches in the
dark, you know."

"Well, at any rate, the coincidence appealed to me so far that it struck
me it might be worth while to describe the brooch to the police in order
that they could trace it if it had been pawned. They had tried that, of
course, over the bracelet without any result, but I fancied the shot might
be worth making, and might possibly lead us on the track of the more
serious robbery."

"Quite so. It was the right thing to do. Well?"

"Well, they found it. A woman had pawned it in London--at a shop in
Chelsea. But that was some time before, and the pawnbroker had clean
forgotten all about the woman's appearance. The name and address she gave
were false. So that was the end of that business."