Chapter VI. A MIGHTY POOR JOKE

Of course, one knows that there are people who in a different
grade of society would be shoplifters and pickpockets. When they
are restrained by obligation or environment they become a little
overkeen at bridge, or take the wrong sables, or stuff a
gold-backed brush into a muff at a reception. You remember the
ivory dressing set that Theodora Bucknell had, fastened with fine
gold chains? And the sensation it caused at the Bucknell
cotillion when Mrs. Van Zire went sweeping to her carriage with
two feet of gold chain hanging from the front of her wrap?

But Anne's pearl collar was different. In the first place,
instead of three or four hundred people, the suspicion had to be
divided among ten. And of those ten, at least eight of us were
friends, and the other two had been vouched for by the Browns and
Jimmy. It was a horrible mix-up. For the necklace was gone--there
couldn't be any doubt of that--and although, as Dallas said, it
couldn't get out of the house, still, there were plenty of places
to hide the thing.

The worst of our trouble really originated with Max Reed, after
all. For it was Max who made the silly wager over the telephone,
with Dick Bagley. He bet five hundred even that one of us, at
least, would break quarantine within the next twenty-four hours,
and, of course, that settled it. Dick told it around the club as
a joke, and a man who owns a newspaper heard him and called up
the paper. Then the paper called up the health office, after
setting up a flaming scare-head, "Will Money Free Them? Board of
Health versus Millionaire."