“Why, Auntie, it couldn’t have been! It _couldn’t_!” “I know that. I know it as well as you. Just the same, I believe he did.” “But he wasn’t even here!” urged the girl. “You heard what he said about having dined at the Country Club, and that a dozen people there could prove it.” “Yes,” assented Miss Gregg. “I heard him.” “You don’t believe him?” “Yes. I believe him implicitly. For nobody would want to testify in Osmun Creede’s behalf who didn’t have to. He knows that as well as we do. So if he says a dozen people can prove he was there, he’s telling the truth. He’d like nothing better than to bother those people into admitting they saw him there. Especially if they could send him to jail by denying it. Oh, he was there, fast enough, at the Country Club while the rooms here were being looted. I believe that.” “Then how could he have done the robbing?” insisted the girl, sore perplexed. “I don’t know,” admitted her aunt. “In fact, I suppose he couldn’t. But I’m equally certain he did.” “But what makes you think so?” “What makes me _know_ so?” amended Miss Gregg. “You’re a woman. And yet you ask that! Are you too young to have the womanly vice of intuition--the freak faculty that tells you a thing is true, even when you know it can’t be? Osmun Creede stole our jewelry. I know it, for a number of reasons. The first and greatest reason is because I don’t like Osmun Creede. The second and next greatest reason is that Osmun Creede doesn’t like _me_. A third reason is that there’s positively nothing too contemptible for Osmun Creede to do. He cumbers the earth! I do wish some one would put him out of our way. Take my word, he stole--” “Isn’t that rather ridiculous?” gravely asked Doris, from the lofty wisdom of twenty-two years. “Of course it is. Most real things are. Is it half as ridiculous as for Thaxton Vail to have the stolen Argyle watch in his pocket when it couldn’t possibly be there? Is it?” “I--I can’t understand that, myself,” confessed Doris. “But--” “But you know it’s somehow all right? Because you trust Thax. Precisely. Well, I can’t understand how Oz Creede could have committed the robberies when he wasn’t here. But I know he did. Because I distrust him. If it comes down to logic, mine is as good as yours.” “But,” urged Doris, giving up the unequal struggle, “why should he do such a thing? He is well off. He doesn’t need the things that were stolen. That was your argument to prove Thax didn’t steal them. Besides, with all the horrid things about him, nobody’s ever had reason to doubt that Osmun is as honest as the day.”