I now began to see that Anne Caldershaw's hint to her brother had reference to the missing monies of Gabriel Monk. Certainly, even if he had saved every penny of his income for eighty years, he would not have accumulated fifty thousand pounds: but it was more than probable that his visits to London were connected with various investments, and that in one way or another he had gained the fortune mentioned by Mrs. Caldershaw. But--as I asked myself frequently--if Monk had invested the money, why was it not discoverable, since investments cannot very well be concealed. On reflection I decided that the man being a genuine miser, loving the color and weight and feel of gold, had probably turned his investments, whatever they might be, into hard cash, and had hidden this carefully away. In some way Mrs. Caldershaw had learned the whereabouts of the specie, and the missing eye indicated the hiding-place. The money, by Gabriel Monk's will, belonged to Gertrude Monk, but the ex-housekeeper wished her nephew to get it, and so had left him the clue to the place where it was concealed. Perhaps she knew that Striver loved her young mistress, and thought that if he married her, after acquiring the fortune, that justice would be done. She wished, as the saying is, to kill two birds with one stone. But two things puzzled me greatly in connection with the matter. In the first place it was odd that Mrs. Caldershaw, aware of the whereabouts of the money, should not have laid hands on it, and in the second it was difficult to understand how she could arrange that her glass eye should be a clue to its possession. Then I began to believe that the dead woman had removed the coin from where the miser had hidden it, and had drawn a plan of its new resting-place, which she had concealed behind the eye. But having regard to the shell-like shape of the eye, as described by Joseph Striver, the plan could not be delineated on a piece of paper however small, as there was no shield at the back of the artificial eyes to protect it from wear and tear. The plan, I fancied, as did Mr. Striver, was drawn on the inward curve of the eye itself, although it was difficult to imagine that the details had not been obliterated by the moisture of the flesh. But this last conjecture was for the moment beside the matter. What I knew was that Mrs. Caldershaw's glass eye indicated the whereabouts of fifty thousand pounds belonging by will to Gertrude Monk. To find that treasure and marry the girl was what I determined to do. And to manage this, it was necessary to prevent the fortune from falling into Striver's hands, by getting the glass eye into my own possession. That was no easy task, on account of the obscurity which involved the murder and the theft which had led to the murder.