Over My Dead Body

She told it and I put it down. It looked to me, as it unfolded, as if somebody's confidence in someone's daughter might turn out to be misplaced. The two girls taught both dancing and fencing at Nikola Miltan's Studio on East 48th Street. It was an exclusive joint with a pedigreed clientиle and appropriate prices for lessons. They had got their jobs through an introduction from Donald Barrett, son of John P. Barrett of Barrett & De Russy, the bankers. Dancing lessons were given in private rooms. The salle d'armes, on the floor above, consisted of a large room and two smaller ones, and there were two locker rooms, one for men and one for women, where clients exchanged street clothes for fencing costumes.

One of the fencing pupils was a man named Nat Driscoll. She pronounced it Nawht. He was middle-aged or more and fat and rich. Yesterday afternoon he had informed Nikola Miltan that upon going to the locker-room after completing his fencing lesson, which had been given by Carla Lovchen, he had seen the other female fencing instructor, namely Neya Tormic, standing by the open door of the locker, in the act of returning the coat of his street suit, on its hanger, to its hook within the locker; and that she had then closed the locker door and departed by the door to the hall. Upon inspection, to which he had proceeded as soon as possible, he had found that his gold cigarette-case and wallet, the contents intact, were in the pockets where they belonged, and it was not until after he got dressed that he remembered about the diamonds, in a pillbox, which should be there too. They were gone. He had carefully explored each and every pocket. They were not there. He demanded their immediate recovery.

Miss Tormic, summoned by Nikola Miltan, denied any knowledge of the diamonds, and further denied that she had opened Mr Driscoll's locker or touched his clothing. The accusation, she said, was outrageous, infamous, and false. She had not been in the locker-room. Had she been in the locker-room for any conceivable purpose, it would not have been to go through men's clothes. Had she gone through a man's clothes, it would not have been Mr Driscoll's clothes; it was beyond the bounds of possibility that she should have the faintest interest in the contents of Mr Driscoll's pockets. She had been justly and somewhat violently indignant.