“Why, Auntie, it couldn’t have been! It couldn’t!”
“I know that. I know it as well as you. Just the same, I believe he did.”
“But he wasn’t even here!” urged the girl. “You heard what he said about having dined at the Country Club, and that a dozen people there could prove it.”
“Yes,” assented Miss Gregg. “I heard him.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Yes. I believe him implicitly. For nobody would want to testify in Osmun Creede’s behalf who didn’t have to. He knows that as well as we do. So if he says a dozen people can prove he was there, he’s telling the truth. He’d like nothing better than to bother those people into admitting they saw him there. Especially if they could send him to jail by denying it. Oh, he was there, fast enough, at the Country Club while the rooms here were being looted. I believe that.”
“Then how could he have done the robbing?” insisted the girl, sore perplexed.
“I don’t know,” admitted her aunt. “In fact, I suppose he couldn’t. But I’m equally certain he did.”
“But what makes you think so?”
“What makes me know so?” amended Miss Gregg. “You’re a woman. And yet you ask that! Are you too young to have the womanly vice of intuition—the freak faculty that tells you a thing is true, even when you know it can’t be? Osmun Creede stole our jewelry. I know it, for a number of reasons. The first and greatest reason is because I don’t like Osmun Creede. The second and next greatest reason is that Osmun Creede doesn’t like me. A third reason is that there’s positively nothing too contemptible for Osmun Creede to do. He cumbers the earth! I do wish some one would put him out of our way. Take my word, he stole—”