she
had to say.

"What can I have the pleasure of doing for you, Miss Longworth?" Weiss
asked. "I hope that you have come to tell me--"

"I have come to tell you that you are both thieves!" she interrupted.
"If you do not give me back that paper, I don't care what my uncle says,
I shall go to the police station."

The men exchanged swift glances. Littleson suddenly started. He drew
Weiss on one side.

"Stella has got it," he whispered, in a tone of triumph. "Get rid of
this girl easily. That is what she must mean."

Weiss turned round and faced her.

"My dear Miss Longworth," he said, "a thief I would have been if I could
have found the chance, and a thief I would have made of you if you would
have stolen that paper for me, because I considered that it belonged to
us, and we had a moral right to take it. But the fact remains that we
have not got it. When I heard your name announced I hoped that you had
brought it to us."

"You have not got it!" she repeated contemptuously.

"Upon my honour we have not!" Littleson declared.

"Perhaps," she said, turning to him, "you will deny that it was you who
incited my cousin Stella to come and rob her own father?"

The two men exchanged swift glances. Littleson's surmise had been
correct then. It was Stella who had succeeded where the others
had failed!

"We know nothing of Miss Duge," Littleson said, "nor have we received
the paper nor any news of it. If Miss Stella has stolen it, she has not
brought it to us. That is all I can tell you."

Virginia read truth in their faces. She turned away.

"Oh, I do not understand!" she said. "Perhaps I have made a mistake. I
will go."

She hurried outside to the automobile which was waiting, and drove to
the address which Stella had given her. It was a kind of residential
hotel, and a boy in the hall took her up in the lift to the floor on
which Stella's rooms were. She knocked at the door. Stella herself
opened it. She started back when she saw who her visitor was.

"You!" she exclaimed.

Virginia stepped into the room.

"Yes!" she answered. "What have you done with the paper that you stole
from the safe?"

Stella closed the door and looked at her cousin thoughtfully. She had
evidently been busy packing. Dresses and hats lay about on the bed, and
in the next room the maid was busy emptying the cupboards. Stella closed
the communicating door.

"Why have you come here?" she said to Virginia. "You don't suppose I ran
r