ive a pretty penny to
get them from Felix Page. But you lacked sand to brave Page's wrath.

"Then what did you do?" I paused to eye him a moment. "Why, you went
down to Merton and dug up all the old family skeletons. Now you were
surer of your ground; you were ready to levy tribute--blackmail--not
from Page, though, because he would have promptly kicked you out--but
again your nerve failed you. That's where you have fallen down, Burke,
all the way through. You carried a letter or two to Fluette to prove
your claims; then, before their loss was discovered, you brought them
back again, and replaced them in the safe. Oh, that old man, in his
lifetime, inspired a wholesome fear of him in your soul."

Then, circumstantially, I detailed as a statement of the case, my
reconstruction of the tragic night, concluding with his hiding the ruby
in the bar of soap. At this point I suddenly wheeled upon him, and
asked point-blank:

"Tell me what you were doing in Mr. Page's bedroom Friday night, and
what it was that surprised you there?"

He stared at me in amazement. He had been, whilst I was talking,
slowly regaining his self-possession--crawling into himself, as it
were, and pulling down the blinds; and now, when he spoke, it was with
something of his old manner.

"Swift, my biggest blunder was in underestimating your intelligence. I
thought I could play hob with you; but I was a fool." His face gave me
a certain impression of slyness, which I did n't at all like.

"Careful now," I sharply warned.

He sat silent for a moment, then spoke.

"I 'm not taking any more chances. Swift; don't worry. . . . What was
I doing Friday night? I was hunting for the ruby."

"Look here,"--impatiently. "I thought you had trifled enough."

He raised a protesting hand.

"Let me finish. Friday was the first time since Mr. Page's death that
I have managed to shake off the man who has been following me. When I
became convinced that I really had succeeded in doing so, I stayed
under cover until nightfall; then--well, you yourself have said that I
'm an opportunist. I did n't know the cake of soap had been removed
from the bath room; when I discovered it was not there I supposed you
had found the ruby's hiding-place, and that you had concealed it
elsewhere. I was trying to find it, when--when somebody came in."

"One of the Japanese," I supplied.

"They 're not Japanese," he corrected, with a provoking air of superior
kno