So they set off in the afternoon, and made
such a round of it that they were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a
small plain gold brooch--not at all valuable, you know; two or three
pounds, I suppose--which she used to pin up a cloak or anything of that
sort. Before she went out she stuck this in the pin-cushion on her
dressing-table, and left a ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close
by."
"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had occupied, I
take it?"
"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
went--taken, evidently, by some one in a deuce of a hurry, for, when Mrs.
Armitage got back to her room, there was the pin-cushion with a little
tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But the curious
thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was left where it
had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or not she had locked
the door herself, although she found it locked when she returned; but my
niece, who was indoors all the time, went and tried it once--because she
remembered that a gas-fitter was at work on the landing near by--and found
it safely locked.
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