The boy stood babbling. He was not ill-looking, and the pathos of it all made him far from ridiculous. A tall, well-formed lad, his face would have been really attractive, had the light of intelligence blessed it.
But his blue eyes were vacant, his lips were not firm, and his head turned unsteadily from side to side. Yet, now and again, a gleam of cunning showed in his expression, and Fibsy, watching such moments, tried to make him speak rationally.
"Think it up, Sam," he said, kindly. "There! You remember now! So you do! Where did you put the nice pin?"
"In the crack of the floor! In the crack of the floor! In the——"
"Yes, of course you did!" encouraged Stone. "That was a good place. Now, what floor was it? This room?"
"No, oh, nony no! Not this floor, no, no, no—'nother floor."
But all further effort to learn what floor was unsuccessful. Indeed, they didn't really think the boy had hidden the pin in a floor crack, or at least they could not feel sure of it.
"He never had the pin at all," Lucille asserted, "he heard the others talking about it, probably they said it might be in a crack, and he remembered the idea."
"Keep him on the place," Stone told them, as he prepared to go to see Bannard. "Don't let Sam get away, whatever you do."