ed. He left soon after, and
nothing further was known of him there.

"When I learned that much, I, too, went to board with the widow and
learned every detail of Wiley's stay. One of Hillery's oldest friends
had a son who had gone to the bad and was serving a term for highway
robbery in a prison near Phoenix. I found that Wiley had taken a great
interest in the lad and paid him more than one visit, promising to use
his influence to have him pardoned. I went to Phoenix, talked with
this prisoner and a few others, and incidentally looked over the
records.

"I discovered that Wiley had interested himself particularly in an
ex-forger whose term had expired at about that period, and it was
understood that Wiley had provided him with a new start in life. I
hunted up this man--it wasn't hard for he had bought a ranch and was
trying to go straight--and under threat of arrest obtained his written
confession.

"The money for the fresh start was the price Wiley had paid for the
execution of the false document. I have the confession here in my bag,
and I will show it to you later. It is absolutely conclusive proof.
Miss Murdaugh, I may be an accessory after the fact, but I felt sure
you would not want the forger punished, and I gave him time to sell out
his ranch and disappear. I am under the impression that he has gone to
Canada to enlist, and if so----"

Willa shook her head.

"No. I don't believe he had any idea of the purpose to which the
document would be put, or its far-reaching effects, and if he has gone
to war, his punishment is on the knees of the gods."

"Exactly. He did not know. The name of Murdaugh wasn't mentioned in
it if you remember, only those of Hillery and the supposed Abercrombie."

"'Abercrombie!'" repeated Willa meditatively. "I wonder how Wiley came
to add that?"

"I finally solved that. Wiley wanted to add clinching verisimilitude
to the document and took a long shot. Like many another amateur
criminal, he overreached himself, and that one fact, you see, led to
the whole discovery. He must have followed Gentleman Geoff's trail
through his wanderings from Topaz Gulch, seeking a loop-hole to prove
you were not the baby originally adopted, and when he came upon the
story which was told to him in Missoula, Montana, of Gentleman Geoff's
illness in the trapper's cabin on Flathead Lake, one can easily see how
the whole scheme popped into his head. There were the two men and two
little gi