lot to say, and I want
you both to listen. When Margery has heard the whole story, she will
probably despise me for the rest of her life. I can't help it. I've got
to tell all I know, and it isn't so much after all. You didn't fool me
yesterday, Knox; I knew what that doctor was after. But he couldn't make
me tell who killed Mr. Fleming, because, before God, I didn't know."

CHAPTER XXIV

WARDROP'S STORY

"I have to go back to the night Miss Jane disappeared--and that's
another thing that has driven me desperate. Will you tell me why I
should be suspected of having a hand in that, when she had been a mother
to me? If she is dead, she can't exonerate me; if she is living, and we
find her, she will tell you what I tell you--that I know nothing of the
whole terrible business."

"I am quite certain of that, Wardrop," I interposed. "Besides, I think I
have got to the bottom of that mystery."

Margery looked at me quickly, but I shook my head. It was too early to
tell my suspicions.

"The things that looked black against me were bad enough, but they had
nothing to do with Miss Jane. I will have to go back to before the night
she--went away, back to the time Mr. Butler was the state treasurer,
and your father, Margery, was his cashier.

"Butler was not a business man. He let too much responsibility lie with
his subordinates--and then, according to the story, he couldn't do much
anyhow, against Schwartz. The cashier was entirely under machine
control, and Butler was neglectful. You remember, Knox, the crash, when
three banks, rotten to the core, went under, and it was found a large
amount of state money had gone too. It was Fleming who did it--I am
sorry, Margery, but this is no time to mince words. It was Fleming who
deposited the money in the wrecked banks, knowing what would happen.
When the crash came, Butler's sureties, to save themselves, confiscated
every dollar he had in the world. Butler went to the penitentiary for
six months, on some minor count, and when he got out, after writing to
Fleming and Schwartz, protesting his innocence, and asking for enough
out of the fortune they had robbed him of to support his wife, he killed
himself, at the White Cat."

Margery was very pale, but quiet. She sat with her fingers locked in
her lap, and her eyes on Wardrop.

"It was a bad business," Wardrop went on wearily. "Fleming moved into
Butler's place as treasurer, and took Lightfoot as his cashier. That
kept t