the case together, and we managed to fill up the
breaks in each other's story. We talked it over in the early evening,
sitting in a secluded corner of the veranda.

She had already mostly recovered from the experience of the day before.
She was still weak and shaken, but seemingly all serious complications
had been averted. And she resolutely refused to stay in bed.

"It's been a tragic thing, all the way through," she began in the voice
I loved. "It's over now--but Heaven knows it cost enough lives. All for
a treasure that no one knows for sure is a reality.

"I'm going over the case simply, Ned--and you tell me if I have it
right. The letter shows that both George Florey and David Florey, the
butler, were the grandsons of Hendrickson, who once owned this
house--who of course was no one but the original Godfrey Jason. Jason
too had hated his brother enough to kill him, and as the legend says, it
was Jason who first buried the treasure in the lagoon.

"He put it near, perhaps just beside a dangerous sink-hole through which
the tidal waters swept under the wall to the open sea. And when he died
he left two, and perhaps more, copies of a cryptogram to show where the
chest was hidden.

"As you say, Dave Florey, one of the two brothers of this generation of
the Jason family, unquestionably got hold of one of the copies. He
secured the position of butler at this house on purpose to hunt for and
secure the chest. Meanwhile George Florey--we can call him Major Dell,
the name he assumed, from now on--got track of the hiding-place of the
treasure. The letters show that he had sought for it and traced it from
Brazil to Washington, D. C.--at the latter place he possibly consulted
old marine records. He evidently had considerable money, and was earning
some in questionable ways, and through his acquaintance with Van Hope he
got himself invited to this house.

"Here he found his brother. It must have been a disagreeable surprise to
him--the fact that you saw him so shaken and seemingly alarmed in the
hall would indicate that it was. As the Jason brothers had done before
them, these two men hated each other as only brothers can--jealously and
terribly. And through some series of events that will never be known,
they met that night beside the lagoon.

"George Florey--rather, Major Dell--must have been a thoroughly
wicked man. I guess he inherited all of his grandfather Jason's
wickedness--otherwise he wouldn't have been able to