“Isn’t it clear, Miss Van Gorder?” he queried, with a smile. “The Doctor and old Mr. Fleming formed a conspiracy—both needed money—lots of it. Fleming was to rob the bank and hide the money here. Wells’s part was to issue a false death certificate in the West, and bury a substitute body, secured God knows how. It was easy; it kept the name of the president of the Union Bank free from suspicion—and it put the blame on me.”
He paused, thinking it out.
“Only they slipped up in one place. Dick Fleming leased the house to you and they couldn’t get it back.”
“Then you are sure,” said Miss Cornelia quickly, “that tonight Courtleigh Fleming broke in, with the Doctor’s assistance—and that he killed Dick, his own nephew, from the staircase?”
“Aren’t you?” asked Bailey surprised. The more he thought of it the less clearly could he visualize it any other way.
Miss Cornelia shook her head decidedly.
“No.”
Bailey thought her merely obstinate—unwilling to give up, for pride’s sake, her own pet theory of the activities of the Bat.
“Wells tried to get out of the house tonight with that blue-print. Why? Because he knew the moment we got it, we’d come up here—and Fleming was here.”
“Perfectly true,” nodded Miss Cornelia. “And then?”