Dick Sherwood and myself. It's really a frame-up. A
frame-up to catch Barney Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle."

"A frame-up!" ejaculated these two in startled unison.

"How a frame-up?" demanded her father, no bit of the accusing harshness
gone out of his voice.

"Our plan against Dick Sherwood was to have him propose to me, then for
me to confess that I was really married to a mean sort of man I didn't
love--the idea being that Dick would be infatuated enough to pay a big
sum to a dummy husband, and the three of us would disappear as soon as
we got Dick's money. Dick offered to go through with the plan as
Barney Palmer and Jimmie Carlisle had shaped it up--go through with it
to-night--and then after money had passed, we'd have a criminal case
against them. By reminding him that Larry Brainard knew just what we
were up to, and might spoil everything if we didn't act at once, I got
Barney Palmer worked up to the point where he was going to pose as my
husband and take the money. Dick Sherwood was to come a little later,
after he'd first telephoned me, with a big roll of marked money."

There were stuttered exclamations from Barney and Old Jimmie, which
were cut off by the dominant incisiveness of Joe Ellison's words to his
daughter:

"I think you're lying to me! Besides, even if you're telling the truth,
it's a pretty way you've taken to clear things up! Don't you see that by
letting Dick Sherwood come here and play such a part, you'd be dead sure
to involve him and his family in a dirty police story that the papers
of the whole country would play up as a sensation? It's plain to any one
that that's no way a person who wanted to square things would use Dick
Sherwood. And that's why I think you're lying!"

"I had thought of that--you're right," said Maggie. "And so I wasn't
going to do it. He was going to telephone me--just about this time--and
when he called up I was going to fake his message. I was going to tell
Barney Palmer and Old Jimmie that Dick had just telephoned he wasn't
coming, because one of the two had just sold him a tip for ten thousand
dollars that this was a crooked game. I thought this would have started
a quarrel between the two; they are suspicious of each other, anyhow.
Each would have accused the other, and in their quarrel they would have
been likely to have let out a lot of truth that would have completely
given each other away."

"Not a bad plan at all," commented Joe Ellison. He tried to peer