"I am here," he muttered, "I have killed her, or, at least, she is dying--lying there on the floor, dying--I have to get out before the servants break in--I can't get out, there's no way I can get out. Mr. Stone, he _didn't_ get out, because----" "Because he wasn't in!" interrupted Fleming Stone, excitedly. "Oh, Fibs, do _you_ see it that way too?" "Sure I do! Fancy anybody untyin' a lot o' ropes, and freein' the lady and makin' a getaway, ropes and all, in two or three minutes, and besides, he _couldn't_ get out!" Fibsy stated this as triumphantly as if it were a new proposition. "The upset table," he went on, "the smashed lamp, with its long, green cord, the poor lady's dress open at the throat----" "Yes," Stone nodded, eagerly, "yes,--and I daresay she had lace frills at her wrists and neck----" "Of course she did! Oh, the plucky one!" And then the two investigators put their heads together and reconstructed to their own satisfaction the whole scene of Mrs. Pell's tragic death. "I'll go right over to see Young again," Stone said, at last, "and you skip around to see Mrs. Bowen; she'll tell you more than Miss Clyde can." "Of course she will, and the dominie, too." After a long argument, Fleming Stone persuaded Young that it would really be better for him to tell the truth, as to his movements on that fatal Sunday, than to persist in his falsehoods. Stone did not tell the prisoner of his brother's confirmation of his unimpeachable alibi, but he told him that he was sure he did not murder Mrs. Pell. "However," Stone said, "unless you tell the truth about her death, you will not only be suspected but convicted." And, finally, seeing it was his best hope, Young told his story. "I went to the house about half-past eleven Sunday morning," he stated, "everybody had gone to church, and the old lady was there alone." "What did you go for?" "To get that receipt and the pin." "Why those two things?" "I had reason to think that they meant the discovery of her great hoard of jewels. I'm telling you all, for I want to prove that I not only did not kill the lady, but had no thought or intention of doing so." "You took ropes along to tie her with?" "Hardly that. I had some strong twine, as I thought she might prove fractious, and I was determined to get the pin and paper." "How did you ever know about those things?" "My uncle made the pin--engraved it, I mean. He was a marvelously expert engraver in the firm of Craig, Marsden & Co. After his death I came across a memorandum that gave away the secret. Not the solution of the cipher, exactly, he didn't know that himself. But a statement that he had engraved the pin for Mrs. Pell, and that, with the receipt for the work itself, it formed a direction as to where the jewels were hidden." "And you demanded these things of her?" "Yes, I told her the jewels belonged partly to my uncle." "Did they?"