"Even if suspicion clings to Mr. Bannard?"
"He didn't do it! All the suspicion in the world can't hurt him, because it isn't true! I shall free him, if necessary, by my own efforts! Truth must prevail. But more than that I want the murderer found. I want the mystery of his exit solved. I want to know the whole truth, and after that, we'll go to dig for the treasure. If no one knows of the meaning of the cipher message but just us few, no one else can get ahead of us, and dig before we get there. Please, please, Mr. Stone, let the jewels wait, and put all your energies toward solving the greater mystery of Aunt Ursula's death."
"A strong point in favor of Mr. Bannard," Stone said, thoughtfully, "is the fact of the clues that seemed to incriminate him. If he had been a murderer, would he have left the half-smoked cigarette, so easily traced to him? Would he have gone off with a check, drawn that very day, in his pocket?"
"And the paper! He left that!" exclaimed Lucille.
"No," said Stone, "he didn't leave that. Young left that."
"How do you know?"
"Because Young was staying at a boarding-house up in Harlem, and the New York paper, still unfolded, had in it a circular of a Harlem laundry. That's why I remarked to Terence that the man who left that came from near Bob Grady's place, which is a saloon near the laundry in question. That paper never came from the locality where Bannard lives."
"And that proved Mr. Young's presence," Fibsy said. "Just as the cigarette proved Mr. Bannard's. Now neither of those men would have left those clues if they had murdered the lady."
"I've always heard that a murderer does do just some such thoughtless thing," remarked Chapin.
"This murderer didn't," and Fibsy shook his head. "When you goin' to tell 'em, Mr. Stone?"