Benedict did not answer the question directly. "Things began to fit themselves together pretty rapidly after I got the facts in the history of 'The Great Oro'," he went on. "By that time the news of your arrest and return to the penitentiary had reached Glendale and the gossip bees were buzzing. Whitredge was rattling around like a pea in a dried bladder, holding midnight conferences in the bank with the two hoary old villains who had sworn your liberty away, starting a petition for your pardon, and I don't know what all. I didn't pay much attention to him because I was at that time more deeply interested in a number of other things." "Go on," I begged breathlessly. "First, I investigated carefully the records of your trial and it didn't take very long to discover that Whitredge had doubled-crossed you. He bribed the two deputies sent to transfer you from the police station in Glendale to the county seat. They were to bully and browbeat you into making an attempt to escape--thus affording proof presumptive of your guilt--and this they proceeded to do. They've admitted it under oath--after I had shown them what we could do to them if they didn't." "Whitredge began to plan for that very thing almost at the first," I put in. "It was he who put the idea of running way into my head." "Sure he did. But speaking of affidavits, I have another; from a fellow named Griggs; you remember him, of course,--your understudy in Geddis's bank at the time when you were bookkeeper and cashier? He swears that the original stock certificates in 'The Great Oro' were made out in the name of Abel Geddis--as you know they were--and that on a certain night just previous to your arrest, when he had been working late and had gone to the back room for his hat and coat, Geddis and Whitredge came in and Geddis opened the vault. Are you paying attention?" I was choking with impatience, as he well knew, but he refused to be hurried. "All in good time," he chuckled. "I'm coming to it by littles. Griggs was curious to know what was going on and he played the spy. He saw Geddis's name taken out of the stock certificates with an acid and your name written in its place. You see, they were confidently counting upon 'getting' you through Geddis's daughter and were framing things up to fit. How much or how little they took the young woman into their confidence I don't know." "That doesn't matter now," I hastened to say.