"You don't advise me to accept his offer, do you?"
"No; Miss Clyde, I certainly do not. But there is another phase of this matter, you know. If Charlie Young stole that paper from the pocket-book he was the one who attacked your aunt——"
"And Winston Bannard is in jail in his place! Oh, Mr. Stone, let the jewels be a secondary consideration, get Win freed and Charles Young accused of the murder—he must be the guilty man!"
"It looks that way," Stone mused; "and yet, Bannard admits he was here that Sunday morning, and had an interview with his aunt. May he not have obtained possession of the receipt—oh, don't look like that! Perhaps his aunt gave it to him willingly, perhaps she told him of its value——"
"Oh, no," cried Iris, "if all that had happened, Win would have told me. No; when he discovered that the receipt was left to him and was especially referred to in the will, he was amazed and disappointed to find that old pocket-book empty."
"He seemed to be," said Stone, but his manner gave no hint of accusation of Bannard's insincerity.
"Mr. Bannard, he ain't the murderer," declared Fibsy; "and that Young, he ain't neither. Because—how'd they get out?"
"How did the murderer get out, whoever he was?" countered Stone.
"He didn't," said the boy, simply.
It was soon after that, that Hughes came to Pellbrook to report progress.