a ventilator and was covered with a heavy wire screen. No
prisoners ever dug their way out of a dungeon with more energy
than that with which we attached that screen, hacking at it with
kitchen knives, whispering like conspirators, being scratched
with the ragged edges of the wire, frozen with the cold air one
minute and boiling with excitement the next. And when the wire
was cut, and Bella had rolled her coat up and thrust it through
and was standing on a chair ready to follow, something outside
that had looked like a barrel moved, and said, "Oh, I wouldn't do
that if I were you. It would be certain to be undignified, and
probably it would be unpleasant--later."

We coaxed and pleaded and tried to bribe, and that happened, as
it turned out, to be one of the worst things we had to endure.
For the whole conversation came out the next afternoon in the
paper, with the most awful drawings, and the reporter said it was
the flashing of the jewels we wore that first attracted his
attention. And that brings me back to the robbery.

For when we had crept back to the kitchen, and Bella was fumbling
for her handkerchief to cry into and the Harbison man was trying
to apologize for the language he had used to the reporter, and I
was on the verge of a nervous chill--well, it was then that Bella
forgot all about crying and jumped and held out her arm.

"My diamond bracelet!" she screeched. "Look, I've lost it."

Well, we went over every inch of that basement, until I knew
every crack in the flooring, every spot on the cement. And Bella
was nasty, and said that she had never seen that part of the