his share of the stolen sapphires undiscovered past the rigorous search which had been accorded us at the Grand Central Station?

The suggestion that he might either have slipped them to his waiting confederate direct, or have followed my example, and employed the Captain's fur coat as a vehicle, did occur to me; but I was forced to negative both solutions. I had observed Glenn very closely during those trying moments when we were disembarking from the train, and I was positive that he had adopted neither expedient.

But these were minor and more or less trivial features, at any rate. The great point was that I had mastered the problem, elucidated the mystery. So I had, in a way; and yet I was far from being satisfied, for the kernel of the scheme, the one thing I had set out to prove, still baffled and eluded me. I was as far removed as ever from being able to demonstrate complicity on the part of Baggerly.

Not one thread could I find in all the skein I had so painstakingly unravelled which seemed to lead to him. Yet I was no less firmly convinced that his was the cunning brain which had planned and plotted all, his the hand behind the scenes

which controlled and guided the movements of these various puppets.

"Trust a woman's intuitions," I declared unfalteringly to myself. "He is guilty. The proof of it will come later."

CHAPTER II

A RACE AND A RESCUE

"THE night bringeth counsel." Often the conclusions exultingly reached under the glitter and illusion of the gaslight will appear pitifully weak and inept when arraigned before the uncompromising bar of the sober second thought; but the deductions I had drawn the evening before suffered little by the test of a morning review. I was still convinced that I was on the right track.

More than that, I had gained a new inference. Whether it came to me, as to the prophets of old, in the form of a dream, or whether I seized it in the moments after awaking from my slumbers, and while drowsily pondering over the subject ever uppermost in my thoughts, I cannot be certain; but I realised now how it was that Harry Glenn had been able to pass unchallenged through the ordeal of the search at the Grand Central Station. He had not had the sapphires on his person.

Remember the cigar butt, which had revealed the fact of his presence on the grounds; and remember where it was found, at the foot of the hollow tree, beside which the Captain and I had paused in our Sunday afternoon stroll. Put these two circumstances together, and you will scarcely fail to arrive at the same conclusion I did.

It had been the cracksman's original purpose, no doubt, in case of interference at the station, to slip his booty to the waiting confederate, as foreshadowed in the personal signed "Country Jake;” but the evidence pointed to a change in these details.

Reconstructing the incident at Onyx Court in the light of my latest hypothesis, then, it was plain that when Glenn and the assistant who had accompanied him thither had been forced by Estelle's inopportune appearance to abandon their operations at the window, and to flee with what spoil they had, their natural impulse would be to seek the nearest shelter, and that, as it happened, was the little copse wherein stood the hollow tree.

There they had probably halted to take an observation and discuss their future movements. In this interval, and seeing no signs of imme

diate pursuit, Glenn had solaced himself with a cigar, and under its soothing influence had laid down the line of procedure which they ultimately followed.

With the robbery discovered, and the alarm given, for they could scarcely be expected to forecast Estelle's silence,-Glenn reasoned, no doubt, that it would be highly perilous for them to appear at the local station with the stolen necklace in their possession. Two strangers, and unable to give a satisfactory account of themselves, the Wheaton constabulary would be only too ready to pounce upon them the moment they should show their faces.

It was necessary, therefore, that they should immediately find a cache, in which to deposit their booty, until such time as it would be safe for them to return and claim it. A hole dug in the ground was hardly feasible; traces would inevitably be left which might lead to the discovery of the hidden treasure by alien hands. Glancing around, they espied the hollow tree, growing here as though for their convenience in this dilemma.

No sooner suggested than done. The jewels safely stowed away inside, they had but to make