The surprised, but secretly gratified, detective at once complied. He saw no reason for keeping quiet about that day's work. He told how, by means of a letter purporting to come from Mansell, he had decoyed Imogene to an interview in the hut, where, under the supposition she was addressing her lover, she had betrayed her conviction of his guilt, and advised him to confess it.
Mr. Ferris listened with surprise and great interest.
"That seems to settle the question," he said.
But it was now Hickory's turn to shake his head.
"I don't know," he remonstrated. "I have sometimes thought she saw through the trick and turned it to her own advantage."
"How to her own advantage?"
"To talk in such a way as to make us think Mansell was guilty."
"Stuff!" said Byrd; "that woman?"
"More unaccountable things have happened," was the weak reply of Hickory, his habitual state of suspicion leading him more than once into similar freaks of folly.
"Sir," said Mr. Byrd, confidingly, to the District Attorney, "let us run over this matter from the beginning. Starting with the supposition that the explanation she gave you last night was the true one, let us see if the whole affair does not hang together in a way to satisfy us all as to where the real guilt lies. To begin, then, with the meeting in the woods——"