"That Charlie Young," he said, "he's a queer dick."
"Talk? Nothing but! He tells the most astonishing things. He vows he's in cahoots with Winston Bannard."
"That isn't true!" Iris cried out "Win isn't guilty himself, of course, but he isn't mixed up with a man like Charlie Young, either!"
"Young says," Hughes went on, "that the note asking for the pin is in Bannard's disguised writing. He says that Bannard put him up to kidnapping Miss Clyde and getting the pin from her so they two could get the jewels and——"
"What utter rubbish!" Iris said, disdainfully. "Do you mean that Mr. Bannard wanted to get the jewels away from me? And have both his share and my own? Ridiculous!"
"It seems, Miss Clyde," Hughes stated, "that Young has part of some directions or something like that, as to where to find the jewels; and he made it up with Bannard to get the pin, which he claims is a key to their hiding-place, and the two men were to share the loot."
"I never heard such absurdity!" Iris' eyes blazed with anger. "Mr. Stone, won't you go and interview this Young, and tell him he lies?"
"I'll assuredly interview him, Miss Clyde, but suppose Mr. Bannard did have that paper—that receipt——"
"He didn't! Why, if he had, why would he confer with that bad man? Why not by means of his paper, which is, you know, lawfully his, and my pin, which was bequeathed to me, why not, those two things are all that is necessary, find the jewels by their aid?"