doubt him for an
instant. What made you think he might still have the ruby?"

"Oh, we police officers think of everything. Then the fact that he
insists that something or some one touched his breast on the driveway
strikes me as a trifle suspicious. Your mother says that no second
person could have been there, or the snow would have given evidence of
it."

"Yes; I looked expressly. Of course, the drive itself was full of
hoof-marks and wheel-tracks, for several carriages had already passed
over it. Then there were all of Deane's footsteps, but no other man's,
as far as I could see."

"Yet he insists that he was touched or struck."

"Yes."

"With no one there to touch or strike him."

Mr. Ashley was silent.

"Let us step out and take a view of the place," I suggested. "I should
prefer doing this to questioning the young man in his present state of
mind." Then, as we turned to put on our coats, I asked with suitable
precaution: "Do you suppose that he has the same secret suspicions as
ourselves, and that it is to hide these he insists upon the jewel's
having been taken away from him at a point the ladies are known not to
have approached?"

Young Ashley bent somewhat startled eyes on mine.

"Nothing has been said to him of what Miss Peters saw Miss Glover do. I
could not bring myself to mention it. I have not even allowed myself to
believe--"

Here a fierce gust, blowing in from the door he had just opened, cut
short his words, and neither of us spoke again till we stood on the
exact spot in the driveway where the episode we were endeavoring to
understand had taken place.

"Oh," I cried as soon as I could look about me; "the mystery is
explained. Look at that bush, or perhaps you call it a shrub. If the
wind were blowing as freshly as it is now, and very probably it was, one
of those slender branches might easily be switched against his breast,
especially if he stood, as you say he did, close against this border."

"Well, I'm a fool. Only the other day I told the gardener that these
branches would need trimming in the spring, and yet I never so much as
thought of them when Mr. Deane spoke of something striking his breast."

As we turned back I made this remark:

"With this explanation of the one doubtful point in his otherwise
plausible account, we can credit his story as being in the main true,
which," I calmly added, "places him above suspicion and narrows our
inquiry down to _one_."

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