"Oh, yes, you could, and if we get the dime and the receipt that was in the pocket-book we can try every word on them both, and I feel sure we'll get the answer. Now, since Pollock, or Young, rather, was so desirous of getting the pin, I argue that he had the necessary key word. Therefore we must get it from him, if we can't get it ourselves, and I doubt if he'll give it up willingly." "Of course he has the key word," Iris said, "for he told me he could find the jewels and no one else could, if I'd hand over the pin. And he offered to go halves with me! The idea!" "And yet, if he has the key word, and won't give it up, you can never find the jewels," observed Stone. "You don't advise me to accept his offer, do you?" "No; Miss Clyde, I certainly do not. But there is another phase of this matter, you know. If Charlie Young stole that paper from the pocket-book he was the one who attacked your aunt----" "And Winston Bannard is in jail in his place! Oh, Mr. Stone, let the jewels be a secondary consideration, get Win freed and Charles Young accused of the murder--he must be the guilty man!" "It looks that way," Stone mused; "and yet, Bannard admits he was here that Sunday morning, and had an interview with his aunt. May he not have obtained possession of the receipt--oh, don't look like that! Perhaps his aunt gave it to him willingly, perhaps she told him of its value----" "Oh, no," cried Iris, "if all that had happened, Win would have told me. No; when he discovered that the receipt was left to him and was especially referred to in the will, he was amazed and disappointed to find that old pocket-book empty." "He seemed to be," said Stone, but his manner gave no hint of accusation of Bannard's insincerity. "Mr. Bannard, he ain't the murderer," declared Fibsy; "and that Young, he ain't neither. Because--how'd they get out?" "How did the murderer get out, whoever he was?" countered Stone. "He didn't," said the boy, simply. It was soon after that, that Hughes came to Pellbrook to report progress. "That Charlie Young," he said, "he's a queer dick." "Will he talk?" asked Stone. "Talk? Nothing but! He tells the most astonishing things. He vows he's in cahoots with Winston Bannard." "That isn't true!" Iris cried out "Win isn't guilty himself, of course, but he isn't mixed up with a man like Charlie Young, either!" "Young says," Hughes went on, "that the note asking for the pin is in Bannard's disguised writing. He says that Bannard put him up to kidnapping Miss Clyde and getting the pin from her so they two could get the jewels and----" "What utter rubbish!" Iris said, disdainfully. "Do you mean that Mr. Bannard wanted to get the jewels away from me? And have both his share and my own? Ridiculous!"