Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/185
one's been an' bruk in the dining-room winder. Footpads, I guess.
Mrs. Bennett gave a little shriek of dismay. She ran to the dining room.
One window stood an inch or two open, and one of the panes was broken. She glanced round the room. Nothing was disarranged, but her glance fell on the sideboard.
The coffee-urn was gone!
"Well," she said, "that's very extraordinary. Mr. Bennett slept here last night, and he's a light sleeper. He always locks the windows before he goes to bed. Is anything else missing?"
"The apple pie's gone out o' the ice-box," said Emily.
"Oh, well, that's Mr. Bennett, I'm sure," said Elaine. "I'll call up the police right away, and see if they can do anything. My nice coffee-urn! Why, it's the finest thing we had in the whole house."
Before the police arrived, Mrs. Bennett herself took a careful look round the outside of the house. She found nothing unusual except a cigar butt lying on the ground near the broken window. She picked it up gingerly. A section of the gilt band still adhered to the wrapper. She could read the name, Florona. She carried the fragment into the cellar and threw it into the ash-can.