He picked out one of the letters, opened it, and made certain of his facts before he cried, angrily:
"Then I want to have nothing whatever to do with them. They treated my mother shamefully."
The inspector had sharp eyes.
"What is the date of that letter?" he inquired.
"January 18th of this year."
"And what are those—pawn tickets?"
"Yes, some of my mother's jewelry and dresses. Her wedding ring was the last to go. Most of them are out of date, but I intend to—I will try to save some of them, especially her wedding ring."
Jocky Mason's romance was now dissipated into thin air. The contents of the portmanteau, the squalid appearance of the house, the date of the solicitor's letter, the bundle of pawn tickets, offered conclusive evidence to the inspector's matter-of-fact mind that the ex-convict's story was the effect of a truncheon rapidly applied to a brain excited by the newspaper comments on a sensational yarn about some boy who had found a parcel of diamonds.
This youngster had not been favored by any such extraordinary piece of luck. Simple chance had led him to put the police on the track of a much-wanted scoundrel, and he had very bravely prevented a member of the force from being badly worsted in the ensuing encounter.
A subscription would be made among the officers and men of the division, and they would give him a silver watch, with a suitable inscription.