"How do I know that?" cried his wife spiritedly; "you can strike me, but speak the truth I will. Bad as you are, I don't want to see you hanged, and hanged you will be, whatever you may say. I heard from Cain that you talked to Strode on the Wednesday night he was killed. You met him at the station, when he arrived by the six-thirty, and----" "What's that got to do with the murder?" snapped Giles savagely. "I talked to him only as a pal." "Your wicked London friends were there too," said Mrs. Merry; "oh, Cain told me of the lot you're in with; Father Don, Foxy, and Red Jerry--they were all down at Westhaven, and that boy Butsey too, as lied to me. You sent him here to lie. Cain said so." "I'll break Cain's head if he chatters. What if my pals were at Westhaven? what if I did speak to Strode----?" "You was arranging to have him shot," said Mrs. Merry, "and shot him yourself for all I know." Signor Antonio leaped, and taking his wife by the shoulders, shook her till her head waggled. "There," he said, while she gasped, "you say much more and I'll knock you on the head with a poker, you poll-parrot. I was doing my turn at the circus at the time Strode was shot, if he was shot at nine on Wednesday as the doctor said. I saw the evidence in the paper. You can't put the crime on me." "Then your pals did it." "No, they didn't. They wanted the diamonds, it's true----" "They struck him down and robbed him." "You said they shot him just now," sneered Giles with an evil face, "don't know your own silly mind, it seems. Gar'n, you fool, there was nothing on him to rob. If my pals had shot him, they'd have collared the wooden hand. That was the token to get the diamonds, as Red Jerry said. But Mask hasn't got them, and though Father Don did open the hand he found nothing." "Open the hand?" questioned Mrs. Merry curiously. "Yes. We found out--I found out, and in a way which ain't got nothing to do with you, that the hand could be opened. It was quite empty. Then Father Don put it aside, and that brat Butsey prigged it. Much good may it do him." "The wooden hand was put on the doorstep last night," said Mrs. Merry, "and I gave it to Miss Eva." The man's face grew black. "Oh, you did, did you," he said, "instead of giving it to your own lawful husband? I've a mind to smash you," he raised his fist again, and his poor wife winced; then he changed his mind and dropped it. "But you ain't worth a blow, you white-faced screeching cat. I'll see Miss Eva and make her give up the hand myself. See if I don't." "Mr. Allen will interfere." "Let him," snarled Merry; "I know something as will settle him. I want that hand, and I'm going to have it. Get those diamonds I will, wherever they are. I believe Butsey's got 'em. He's just the sort of little devil as would have opened that hand, and found the paper inside, telling where the diamonds were." "But did he have the hand?"