ght there," she said. "I saw him yesterday, after
I left you."

"You did? Whew! There's something queer here, Bessie. Now, try to
remember just what was said and tell me all about it."

It was not hard for Bessie, guided by a few questions from Jamieson,
to do that, and in a few moments she had supplied him with a complete
review of her interview with the shyster, Brack, He nodded approvingly
when she had finished.

"You did just right," he said, cheerfully. "I guess Mr. Brack won't get
much change out of you, Bessie. There's one thing sure, you managed to
acquire a lot of sense while you lived in Hedgeville. The sort we call
common sense, though I don't know why, because it's the rarest sort of
sense there is. Keep on acting just like that when people ask you
questions and try to get you to tell them things."

"Do you think anyone else is likely to do that, Mr. Jamieson?"

"You can't tell. I'm all in the dark, you see. This thing acts just like
a Chinese puzzle. They're simple enough when you know how to fit the
pieces together, and you wonder why they ever stumped you. But until you
do guess them--" He stopped, with a comical shrug of his shoulders to
indicate his helplessness and his bewilderment, and Bessie laughed.

Then Eleanor came out, and the story of Brack's shrewdness had to be
told to her.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

Jamieson threw up his hands with a laugh.

"Wait--and keep my eyes open," he said. "I'm going to act as if I'd lost
all interest in the case. That may fool Brack. Our best chance now, you
see, is to wait for the other side to make a mistake. They've made some
already; the chances are they'll do it again. Then we can nab them. What
I want to do is to make them think they're quite safe, that they needn't
be afraid of us any more."

"You won't need Bessie, then, right away?"

"No. Really, she worries me. I feel as if she weren't safe here. They
seem to be afraid of her, and I wouldn't put it past them to try to get
hold of her and keep her where she can't do any talking until they've
done what they want to do."

"But, Charlie, they must know that she's told us everything she knows
already. Why should they want to take her away now?"

"If I knew that I could answer a lot of other questions, too. But here's
a guess. Suppose she knows something without knowing at all what it
means, or how important it is? That might easily be. She might be able
to clear up the whole my