The Corbin necklace

“Your grandmother’s necklace?” I inquired. It had been ten minutes or so since we’d mentioned it. Evidently, though, it was still on his mind. “Oh, something fabulous,” I told him.

Punch’s sense of duty condemned him to a rather dull day. He ate a solitary lunch, for his mother hadn’t returned from town, and Judy was apparently making a day of it with his...

None of the Corbins went down to the village, which is the better part of two miles from The Oaks, to meet the train. Both Gran and Uncle Alec seemed to think it rather queer th...

I had three visitors that evening. Punch was the first. He ditched the dinner at The Oaks and rode over on his bicycle in time to dine with me--to go through the motions of dini...

Punch didn’t want to be sent to bed, so he was adroitly evading his mother’s notice, flitting about the edges of the evening’s gaiety and lingering in the shadows. It was a warm...

Punch told me he didn’t know when it happened; whether he dreamed it, or whether it broke over him as he was falling asleep or just in the moment of his waking up.

It was from Victoria that I learned of the return of the necklace. She telephoned me about nine o’clock Friday morning, and I was disposed at first to be rather touched by her c...

He launched as a topic of conversation the modern young person, and at just that moment I was grateful to him, although it is a subject which, as far as I am concerned, has been...

It was the thought of Judy that made me change my mind about going to The Oaks with old Mr. Smith. I thought that perhaps if I were alone at the cottage all the afternoon, and i...

What Judy thought she wanted of me at dinner that night I don’t know. Probably she didn’t know herself. She regarded me as an ally and may have reasoned that some unforeseen cha...

I got my cue at five minutes past four the next morning. I know what time it was since I had, a moment earlier, switched on my light and looked at my watch to see how much longe...

Of course I knew what Judy meant by her horrible past. The escapade Victoria had told me about while she was trying to persuade me to help her put the soft pedal on Alexander Co...

I saw, though, by the way he pulled himself up, that he wasn’t going to tell me about it; not then, anyhow. He walked to the window, and then looked at his watch.

She was still looking rather wild-eyed, like one under some nightmare apprehension. Indeed I thought the shadows of the sleep she’d just awakened from must still be clouding her...

We made up for lost time once we got started. It wasn’t much after half past seven when we got to The Oaks. Alec was waiting to let us in, and he was flabbergasted at the sight...

It was a big, dim, carpeted room, with long windows hung with heavy curtains and lambrequins. Excessive light and noise were carefully guarded against. There was a brown marble...

I looked at Bruce in astonishment. In everything but the bare form of the words he had been accused of having, himself, stolen the necklace, and it was amazing the way the accus...

As usual, Mr. Smith turned out to be right. You wouldn’t have known Raglan for the same man when he came out of that bathroom, and the transformation was completed when he had a...

We made a rather silent meal, served imperturbably by Belden. I found myself wondering whether that perfect butler’s manner would survive the events which this volcanic day was...