"Yesterday it was a guess; today, I know." "How do you know?" "Because today I saw Mapleson," he said, watching her. "Yes? Mapleson, of Sontag & Company? I know him very well," she replied with still no expression but amusement. "What then?" "The ring was pawned with him, a personal matter, the morning after the theft, for the sum of twenty-eight thousand dollars. It was redeemed today." "By whom?" "By you, naturally," said McKenna, yet despite his absolute conviction, her composure was such that he was almost shaken in his theory. "Mapleson never told you that." "No; he refused to answer. It lay in my mind between you and Mrs. Cheever. The fact that he would not answer, gave me my strongest clue." "In what way?" "If it had been Mrs. Cheever, he would not have concealed it, because it would have been a theft. But as it was you who came to him, he refused to divulge the name, because he knew that no crime had been committed and that we had either no right to be investigating, or were doing so to be blinded by you." "McKenna, you are guessing," said Mrs. Kildair again. "You are supposing that only Mrs. Cheever and I are on such terms with him that we could make such a personal transaction. As a matter of fact, not only Mrs. Bloodgood, but her husband and Miss Lille could have done the same thing." "True," said McKenna, but he added obstinately: "No, the only reason Mapleson withheld the name was because no crime had been committed." "Before we go on," she said with the same mocking smile, "would you mind telling me how you worked out this theory? Sit down. I really am interested." If McKenna had not in his possession one bit of information which he had withheld, he would have felt the nervousness of a possible and ridiculous failure. At it was, a doubt flashed across his mind; but he allowed her to see none of this hesitation. "I’m perfectly willing to let you know how it came about," he said, sitting down and speaking frankly. "I’m not laying claim to anything startling. I’ll admit now that as to the details of how it was done, and why it was done, I don’t know. I can guess; but I don’t know. But as to tracing the ring and working back from that—that’s A.B.C." Then, with a flash of intuition, he said abruptly: "Of course, Mapleson has just ’phoned you." "Well, go on," she said without reply, drawn back a little, listening intently. "The first thing I did was to locate the ring," he began. "You yourself know how easy it is to follow a stone worth thirty thousand. You know that, because the moment you found out I was on the case, you knew I would learn that Slade gave it to you. That’s why you had me come here—to block it." "That’s true." "Now, for a while, I admit I was in the dark, following several clues, and I don’t mind saying here that until your engagement I was not at all sure it wasn’t Mr. Slade himself who had taken that way of recovering it."