t exposed, but dropped in under the edge of the big ash tray
so it might look as though it were forgotten--in a sense, lost there."

"How much?" came the quick question.

"Fifty one dollars." He looked around at me.

"Just one dollar above the limit of petty larceny; a hundred cents added
to put it in the felony class that meant state's prison. So he could
have sent Eddie to the pen,--eh? I guess you've got a motive there,
Boyne."

"Well--er--" I squirmed over my statement, blurting out finally. "Hughes
didn't take the money."

"Knew it was a trap," Worth's laugh was bitter. "And hated the man who
cold-bloodedly set it to catch him. If he didn't take it, don't you
think he counted it?"

"Worth," I said sharply. "Your father put those bolts on--and continued
to find that he was being robbed. He was mad about it. Any man would be.
Say what you will, no one likes to find that persons in his employ are
stealing from him. The aggravating thing was that he couldn't bring it
home to Hughes, though he was sure of the fact."

"So he went back to what he had known of Eddie when he hired him? After
profiting by it for five years, he was going to rake that up?"

"He was,"--a bit nettled--"and well within his rights to do so. Three
weeks before he was shot, he wrote that he'd started the inquiry. There
was no further mention of the matter in the book as it stands, but don't
you see that the result of the inquiry must have been on that torn-out
last page? Eddie's Saturday night alibi won't hold water. His cannery
girl, of course, will swear he was with her; but there's no
corroborating testimony. No one saw them together from nine till
twelve."

Dead silence dropped on us, with the white clouds standing like
witnesses in the blue above, the wind bringing now and again on its
scented wings little faint echoes of the noise down at the clubhouse.

"What more do you want?" Both young faces were set against me, cold and
hostile. "Here was motive, opportunity, a suspect capable of the deed.
My theory is that Mr. Gilbert came in on Hughes, caught him in the act
of stealing from the cabinet. Hughes jumped for the pistol over the
fireplace, got it, fired the fatal shot, and placed the dead man's
fingers about the butt of the gun. Then he picked up the diary lying on
the table, tore out the leaf about himself, and poked the rest of the
book down the drain pipe."

"And the shot?" Worth resisted me. "Why didn't the shot bring Chung