r your departure. You might have depended upon this
accomplice to secure the letters. I don't know. The courts must decide.

"Anyway, whether you left Mr. Cameron in an unconscious state or not,
his suite was visited by others soon after your departure. At least
two persons were there, but I do not know whether they entered at the
same moment or not. These men copied a paper they found in the Tolford
estate envelope--the description of a lost mine--and went away. When
Fremont entered the rooms, after all these visits, he found Mr. Cameron
unconscious.

"It seems reasonable to suppose that one of you three men attacked Mr.
Cameron--either Jim Scoby, Felix, or yourself, Don Miguel. We do not
know which one dealt the blow, or whether you were all in the
conspiracy against him, so we are taking you back to New York for
trial. The matter of treason against you can be taken up later on."

"Your story is not exact, and your suppositions are forced," Don Miguel
said, with a sneer, as if about to confound the conclusions of the boy
with the logic of a man. "As purchasing agent for a perfectly
legitimate concern, I visited that suite that night in the interest of
the contract referred to by you. I was disappointed in the outcome of
the negotiations, but I did not ask for the letters. They were
confidential, and Mr. Cameron promised to regard them as such. When I
left his office, Mr. Cameron was at work at his desk. That is all I
have to say."

"And I was in that suite that night," Jim Scoby broke in. "I went in
with a key I had had made, for the night-lock was on. I found Cameron
unconscious on the couch. Felix, the man who sits there, entered with
me. We were after the mine paper, and we got a copy of it. He will
tell you whether what I have said is the truth."

"What Scoby says is the truth," Felix grunted.

The three prisoners had the earnestness of men telling the truth. They
admitted having visited the Cameron suite on the night of the tragedy,
and told how and why they went there. At least they gave good reasons
for going, that of Don Miguel being legitimate, that of the others
based on crime, for they admitted that they went there to steal a paper
from the Tolford estate envelope, or, at least, to copy it.

The three admitted all that Nestor had discovered, and nothing else.
Was this because they knew that he was certain of his facts regarding
the visits and the men who had made them? Anyway, there