Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/112

 the manager's office and loudly squawking that her $100,000 pearl necklace has been abducted from her boudoir. Honestly, she made more noise than a dress rehearsal of a lynching about losing this gewgaw, and in spite of the frantic efforts of the hotel management to keep the thing quiet, why, the thrilling news seeped out and the panic was on. Anyone who can keep a matter like that a dark secret in a large New York hotel can also make a stone bleed to death!

Well, for the next few days you couldn't turn around in our well known inn without bumping into a plain-clothes man, a reporter or a photographer. This got Mr. Williams, the manager, red-headed, but it tickled Abigail silly. Honestly, she was having the time of her life, giving out interviews and posing for newspaper pictures all day long. When public interest in the robbery seemed to be dying down, Abby hauled off and offered a reward of $10,000 for the return of her necklace and that started something!

For one thing, it threw a pair of people right into the spotlight and put it up to them to make good or turn in their shields as detectives and forever hold their peace. The two were Jerry Murphy, our noble house gum shoe, and Oliver Thurston, the private pussyfooter. Jeremiah promptly swelled all up like a sprained ankle and told the world fair that the ten thousand was the same as in the bank to his account, as he had every