“Gave them to Carter to turn over to the district attorney. Carter turned them over to Jed Ringold because he needed an outside point of contact. Ringold saw a chance to collect twenty grand, and still have enough letters for the D.A. Then he lost his dough gambling and decided to go the rest of the way on the letters.
“Your dad found out you were paying out money. Mrs. Ashbury found it out from him. Carter found out Ringold was double-crossing your stepmother. She wanted the D.A. to get those letters. He wanted the D.A. to get some of them. They were prepared for a little delay while Ringold was rigging a plant, but Ringold made the mistake of carrying things too far.”
“I still don’t see,” she said.
“Crumweather, of course, knew about the letters because Lasster told him. When a man gets into jail on a murder rap, he tells his lawyer everything. Crumweather wanted to make certain those letters were destroyed. He supposed, of course, that you’d burnt them, but he wanted to make certain.
“Crumweather knew Carter, had business dealings with him, and knew Carter had an entrée to your house, so he suggested to Carter that it would be a good plan to make certain the letters were destroyed.
“Then Carter must have passed the word on to Mrs. Ashbury, and she saw a chance to double-cross Crumweather, get you involved in a scandal, and make things so hot for you you’d want to leave the country and never show your face in it again.
“She was the one who got into your room and stole the letters. She gave them to Carter and told him not to let Crumweather have them, but to be certain they got into the hands of the district attorney.
“Carter was willing to double-cross Crumweather if Mrs. Ashbury told him to, but Carter saw a chance to make a little dough out of it. He turned the letters over to Ringold and gave Ringold a nice little fairy story to pass on to you that would account for the letters being offered you in three instalments. The plan was that you were to buy two packages of the letters and then the third package was to be turned over to the district attorney. That would give Ringold and Carter a chance to split twenty thousand bucks and still give Mrs. Ashbury everything she wanted, because the letters that reached the district attorney’s hands would be the gems of the collection.
“But Ringold decided to double-cross everybody. He couldn’t see any reason for turning over that last bunch of letters to the D.A. and getting nothing in return except the thanks of the prosecutor’s office which he didn’t like anyway.
“Then he realised that Carter would know there’d been a double cross, and Ringold was in a quandary. Finally he hit on a bullet-proof scheme. He’d hocus-pocus you into thinking you had the last bunch of letters. He’d cash your check, and then turn over the rest of the letters to the D.A.