“And if there is one, it has somehow become known to Madge Babbington.
“Very possibly Edythe Lynne knew about it during her life, and had at some time shown it to Madge; the two had at one time been more or less intimate.
“Or J. Cephas Lynne, Edythe’s father, had revealed the secret to Mrs. Babbington. He had been fond of Madge, too, at one time.
“Or it had become known to Thomas Lynne, who had murdered Cephas Lynne and the daughter Edythe, and who had afterward posed as Cephas Lynne, and as such had engaged himself to marry Madge. If that were true, he might have revealed the secret to the Babbington woman.�
Nick moved uneasily in his chair when he had completed that train of thought—and he gave a start of pain and almost uttered an exclamation, for he felt something that was very much like the prick of a pin.
He got out of the chair and examined the seat of it, and sure enough there, in one of the creases in the leather which the upholsterer had made, tightly imbedded next to the button, was an eight-pointed, diamond-studded star pin such as a woman will wear in the lace against her neck.
The center of the star pin was a gold monogram, out of which Nick had no difficulty in deciphering the letters M. H. B.
So here was another proof of the recent presence of the woman in that room.
A suggestion, too, that she had been quite close to Carleton Lynne while he was still an occupant of his favorite chair; that she had bent over him, perhaps, and had lost the pin in doing so.
He called the attention of Patsy to the fact, then dropped the pin into one of his pockets.