Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/115

 at all hours of the day and night hunting clues, fingerprinted the entire staff and all the guests who would stand for it, and at one time or another tried to pinch the entire ship's company at the St. Moe.

Thurston seemed to get more unholy fun out of Jerry's clowning than anyone in the hotel, and the way this big goof baited Jeremiah was positively brutal. He'd wink at me and call our light-brained house detective aside, filling him full of crazy suggestions for catching Abigail's burglar, and where anybody else would have run Thurston bow-legged, the awed Jerry eagerly followed these tips with the result that he was in hot water as often as steam is.

About this time Miss Abigail Monkton, the elderly charmer of a thousand surprises, sprung a fresh sensation. Three or four weeks after her necklace disappeared, she stopped at the switchboard one day all excited.

"Have they found your necklace yet?" I asked her for the 'steenth time.

"No!" says Abigail, with a grimace that threatened her facial enamel. "My dear, I'm positively disgusted with the police and that impossible Murphy creature. Positively dis-gus-ted! Beyond subjecting me to imbecilic and insulting cross-examinations, they have done nothing. Ab-so-lute-ly nothing! But s-s-sh! May I trust you not to repeat something?"