f your own for suspecting this man, so
by watching you I hoped to surprise them."

"Good!" I cried, unable to entirely conceal the astonishment and grim
amusement into which his continued misconception of the trend of my
suspicions threw me.

"But you led us a chase, madam; I must acknowledge that you led us a
chase. Your being an amateur led me to anticipate your using an
amateur's methods, but you showed skill, madam, and the man I sent to
keep watch over Mrs. Boppert against your looked-for visit there, was
foiled by the very simple strategy you used in meeting her at a
neighboring shop."

"Good!" I again cried, in my relief that the discovery made at that
meeting had not been shared by him.

"We had sounded Mrs. Boppert ourselves, but she had seemed a very
hopeless job, and I do not yet see how you got any water out of that
stone--if you did."

"No?" I retorted ambiguously, enjoying the Inspector's manifest delight
in this scene as much as I did my own secret thoughts and the prospect
of the surprise I was holding in store for them.

"But your interference with the clock and the discovery you made that it
had been going at the time the shelves fell, was not unknown to us, and
we have made use of it, good use as you will hereafter see."

"So! those girls could not keep a secret after all," I muttered; and
waited with some anxiety to hear him mention the pin-cushion; but he did
not, greatly to my relief.

"Don't blame the girls!" he put in (his ears evidently are as sharp as
mine); "the inquiries having proceeded from Franklin, it was only
natural for me to suspect that he was trying to mislead us by some
hocus-pocus story. So _I_ visited the girls. That I had difficulty in
getting to the root of the matter is to their credit, Miss Butterworth,
seeing that you had made them promise secrecy."

"You are right," I nodded, and forgave them on the spot. If I could not
withstand Mr. Gryce's eloquence--and it affected me at times--how could
I expect these girls to. Besides, they had not revealed the more
important secret I had confided to them, and in consideration of this I
was ready to pardon them most anything.

"That the clock was going at the time the shelves fell, and that he
should be the one to draw our attention to it would seem to the
superficial mind proof positive that he was innocent of the deed with
which it was so closely associated," the detective proceeded. "But to
one skilled in the subterfuges