“Look here, Judy,” I said. “I told Alec I’d come right up to The Oaks, and I’ll go as soon as I can dress and get up there in my car. But there’s no reason why this should interfere with your plans.” She looked at me in pitiful bewilderment. “What are my plans?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Your plans for getting married to Bill,” I explained. “You wait here till he comes back with the license and the minister. Get Donovan and the gardener and his wife for your witnesses. Go ahead and marry Bill. And then--well, do just as you like. Start off on your wedding journey, or else stay here. After I’ve seen how the situation looks at The Oaks, I can telephone to you, if you’d like me to, and you can come back just as you had planned, and pretend that nothing has happened. I didn’t tell Alec you were here. All I said was that I could give some news of Bill.” “I can’t be married to Bill now,” she said. “Not till Bruce has got the necklace back.” I started to say that I didn’t see the connection, but she broke in upon me with a savage intensity. “Don’t you see, it’s the necklace that bought me off. Mother bargained me for it, and I gave it to him and got clear. Now he hasn’t got it. It’s been taken away from him. And I can’t marry Bill till he’s got it back. I’m--I’m caught in a trap.” And indeed, her eyes had the panic in them that I’ve seen once or twice, in those of a trapped animal. It was unbearable to see little Judy looking like that. “Let’s try to keep our feet on the ground,” I said, “and see where we really stand. “You gave those pearls to Bruce in good faith. You told him in the note that they were his. That lets you out. Suppose he hadn’t been robbed of them last night but were to have his pocket picked of them to-morrow in town. You wouldn’t feel that bound you to turn yourself over to him. Well, what’s the difference? “Neither you nor Bill had anything to do with the robbery. You _know_ Bill didn’t. You know that from no conceivable motive, sordid or other, would Bill touch that necklace. He’d have done anything to defend Bruce’s possession of it, for it was his release as much as it was yours.” I saw tears spring into her eyes and she came over to me, kissed me briefly, and went back to the couch. “There are two of us, then,” she said, “--and I guess there’s Punch; that makes three.” She was counting up, I knew, the people who were on her side. “And old Mr. Smith,” I added. “I think you can count him in.” She looked a little surprised at that and I went on: “Not for any emotional reason. Simply because he’s so damned intelligent. The advantage of knowing as an axiom that Bill was not the thief is that we can count intelligence on our side.” I couldn’t feel that this had impressed her very much, but she was quieter anyhow, and she was giving me a hearing.