“That’s all, Chief,” resumed Leighton. “I did the trick with the child myself, I wouldn’t trust anybody else. The night was pitch black and there are no houses right near there, you know. I waited till the old lady went out. After I finished the child, I was going to get the mother, but the front gate slammed. It was Peters coming home. I slipped out the back door again. I wanted the husband out of the way, on general principles. I did not know what his wife might have told him and he was better off, in case any publicity attended the restoration of the girl here, where he couldn’t squeak, in case his wife had ever told him her real name and story. “This girl here, a Tenderloiner, that I picked up because she looks a good bit like Mrs. Peters, seemed to have nerve enough for the deal, and she was to collect the estate and give me half. It was a big gamble. You’re right about the scaffold, Chief. I never took any such chance before, but this was a ‘get-away’ stake for life for me, and I took it. “I had no direct dealings with Bannerman. There’s nothing on him. I had talks with Fogarty but paid no money. In a general way he gathered I wanted the man across, and I guess he gathered, too, that there would be a big clean-up all around at the end of it. There’s no case on anybody except myself.” “Nothing on Bannerman or Fogarty that would make a case in court, possibly,” said Lanagan, curtly, “but plenty that the _Enquirer_ can print. You’re loyal to your pals, Leighton.” It appeared that Leighton, through a newspaper advertisement, got into communication with the London firm of lawyers of which Holmes was the confidential representative. They had a theory that the girl they sought had gone to San Francisco. A runaway at the age of fifteen, Gertrude Pendelton had been estranged from her father. She had taken the downward path, but the father, relenting on his death bed, willed his estate to her, and his executors had for months been endeavouring to locate her. Leighton immediately began his plotting to foist an impostor upon the executors and their lawyers. It must be remembered that they had accepted him as a reputable lawyer. He had made a secret trip to England and had secured a fairly complete record of the places the Pendeltons had lived in while the daughter was still with them. Originally residents of various parts of the British possessions, the family had settled at Applegate, where the mother died, the father following her some months later. At Applegate there were none who had ever known the daughter. Leighton’s investigations in England failed to reveal anyone who had in fact ever known her, the Pendeltons only coming to England to settle down there a few years before. To Leighton’s scheming brain, the thing looked perfectly simple.