e facts which she had momentarily
overlooked. "How in the world could my jewels have been in that house
and also in my bureau at the very same time?"

"Isn't it possible that Theodore borrowed them, temporarily, and
smuggled them back when he came?"

The startled look was intensified in her eyes as she met his gaze.

"He must have done it in some such way!" she said. "I thought at the
time, when I ran in to get them, they were not exactly as I had left
them, earlier. And I gave them to you for fear he'd steal them!"

This was some light, at least. Garrison needed more.

"Why couldn't you have told me all about them earlier?"

She looked at him beseechingly. Some way, it seemed to them both they
had known each other for a very long time, and much had been swept away
that must have stood as a barrier between mere client and agent.

"I felt I'd rather not," she confessed. "Forgive me, please. They do
not belong to me.

"Not yours?" said Garrison. "What do you mean?"

"I advanced some money on them--to some one very dear," she answered.
"Please don't probe into that, if you can help it."

His jealousy rose again, with his haunting suspicion of a man in the
background with whom he would yet have to deal. He knew that here he
had no rights, but in other directions he had many.

"I shall be obliged to do considerable probing," he said. "The time
has come when we must work much more closely together. A maze of
events has entangled us both, and together we must find our way out."

She lowered her glance. Her lip was trembling. He felt she was
striving to gain a control over her nerves, that were strung to the
highest tension. For fully a minute she was silent. He waited. She
looked up, met his gaze for a second, and once more lowered her eyes.

"You spoke of--of something--yesterday," she faltered. "It gave me a
terrible shock."

She had broached the subject of the murder.

"I was sorry--sorry for the brutal way--the thoughtless way I spoke,"
he said. "I hope to be forgiven."

She made no reply to his hope. Her entire stock of nerve was required
to go on with the business in hand.

"You said my uncle was--murdered," she said, in a tone he strained to
hear. "What makes you think of such a thing?"

"You have not before made the statement that the Hardy in Hickwood was
your uncle," he reminded her.

"You must have guessed it was my uncle," she replied. "You knew it all
the time."

"No,