She looked at her son proudly. Eden also looked at him, but with a vastly different expression.
“Very good,” he answered. “Then there is no time to be lost. Madden is in a great hurry, as he wants to start for New York very soon. I shall send Bob with the necklace at eleven o’clock tonight—but I absolutely refuse to send him alone.”
“I’ll go along,” Victor offered.
Eden shook his head. “No,” he objected, “I prefer a policeman, even though he does belong to a force as far away as Honolulu. This Charlie Chan—do you think, Sally, that you could persuade him to go with Bob?”
She nodded. “I’m sure of it. Charlie would do anything for me.”
“All right—that’s settled. But where the devil are they? I tell you, I’m worried—”
The telephone interrupted him, and Madame Jordan went to answer it. “Oh—hello, Charlie,” she said. “Come right up. We’re on the fourth floor—number 492. Yes. Are you alone?” She hung up the receiver and turned back into the room. “He says he is alone,” she announced.
“Alone,” repeated Eden. “Why—I don’t understand that—” He sank weakly into a chair.
A moment later he looked up with interest at the chubby little man his hostess and her son were greeting warmly at the door. The detective from Honolulu stepped farther into the room, an undistinguished figure in his Western clothes. He had round fat cheeks, an ivory skin, but the thing about him that caught Eden’s attention was the expression in his eyes, a look of keen brightness that made
