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father's under-chauffeur. He was a boy of sixteen who had worked in the stables for years, but knew a great deal more about cars than he did about horses. And since her father had a great love for the modern machines, and had bought one of the earliest cars while they still lived in New York, Petrie, the stable boy, had made a rapid and pleasing transition.
    "What is it, Petrie? What's wrong? " she asked matter-of-factly.
    He looked totally disheveled, and completely flustered.
    "I have to see your father right away, miss, " he said, obviously near tears, as she tried to lead him away from the library before he disturbed her father in his meeting.
    "I'm afraid you can't. He's busy. Is there something I can help you with? " she said gently but firmly.
    He hesitated, and then looked around, as though afraid someone would hear him. "It's the Ford." He looked terrified as he told her.
    "It's been stolen." His eyes were round with tears, he knew what would happen to him when word got out. He would lose the best job he could ever have, and he couldn't understand how it had happened.
    "Stolen? " She looked as startled as he did. "How is that possible?
    How could someone come on the property and just take it, and no one notice? "
    "I don't know, miss. And I seen it just this morning. I was cleaning it. It was all bright and shiny like the day your father bought it.
    I just left the garage door open for a little while, to air the place out, because it gets so hot, you know, with the sun directly on it, and half an hour later, it was gone. Just gone." His eyes filled with tears again, and Olivia put a gentle hand on his shoulder. There was something about his story which had struck her.
    "What time would that have been, Petrie? Do you remember? " Her voice and her manner were extremely calm, most unusually so for a girl of twenty, but she was used to handling minor crises on the estate daily.
    And this one had a particular ring to it.
    "It was eleven-thirty, miss. I know it exactly." Olivia had last seen her sister at eleven. And the Ford he was so distraught over was the car her father had bought the year before for staffpurposes, errands into town, missions to be carried out in something other than the Cadillac Tourer he was driven in whenever he left Henderson Manor.
    "You know, Petrie, " Olivia said quietly, "I think you ought to let the dust settle for a moment. It's entirely possible that some member of the staff might have borrowed it for an errand, without thinking to mention it to you. Perhaps the gardener, I asked him to look at some rosebushes for me over at the Shepards', perhaps he forgot to tell you.
    " She was suddenly certain that the car hadn't been stolen, and she needed to stall him. If he told her father, then the police would be called, and that would be terribly embarrassing. She couldn't let that happen.
    "But Kittering can't drive, miss. He wouldn't have taken the Ford to go look at your roses. He'd take one of the horses, or his bicycle, not the Ford, miss."
    "Well, perhaps someone else is driving it, but I don't think we should tell my father just yet. Besides, he's busy anyway, we'll wait until dinnertime, shall we? And we'll see if anyone brings it back. I feel sure they will. Now, would you like some lemonade and cookies in the kitchen? " She had led him slowly in that direction, and he seemed slightly mollified, though still very nervous.
    He was terrified he'd lose his job when her father found out that he'd let the car get stolen right out of the garage. But Olivia continued to reassure him as she poured him a glass of lemonade, and handed him a plate of the irresistible cookies, as the cook watched them.
    She promised to check in with Petrie later in the day, and made him promise not to whisper a word of it to her father in the meantime, and then with a wink at the cook, she hurried out of the kitchen, hoping to avoid Bertie, whom she saw advancing on her from the distance.
    But Olivia was faster than