“Well, Miss Butterworth, if I do, it is because I know you will appreciate it. You, like myself, placed weight upon the numbers she is forever running over, and you, like myself, have conceived the possibility of these numbers having reference to something in the one room she inhabits. At first glance the extreme bareness of the spot seemed to promise nothing to my curiosity. I looked at the floor and detected no signs of any disturbance having taken place in its symmetrically laid bricks for years. Yet I counted up to seventy one way and twenty-eight the other, and marking the brick thus selected, began to pry it out. It came with difficulty and showed me nothing underneath but green mold and innumerable frightened insects. Then I counted the bricks the other way, but nothing came of it. The floor does not appear to have been disturbed for years. Turning my attention away from the floor, I began upon the quilt. This was a worse job than the other, and it took me an hour to rip apart the block I settled upon as the suspicious one, but my labor was entirely wasted. There was no hidden treasure in the quilt. Then I searched the walls, using the measurements seventy by twenty-eight, but no result followed these endeavors, and—well, what do you think I did then?”
“You will tell me,” I said, “if I give you one more minute to do it in.”
“Very well,” said he. “I see you do not know, madam. Having searched below and around me, I next turned my attention overhead. Do you remember the strings and strings of dried vegetables that decorate the beams above?”
“I do,” I replied, not stinting any of the astonishment I really felt.
“Well, I began to count them next, and when I reached the seventieth onion from the open doorway, I crushed it between my fingers and—these fell out, madam—worthless trinkets, as you will immediately see, but—”
“Well, well,” I urged.
“They have been identified as belonging to the peddler who was one of the victims in whose fate we are interested.”
“Ah, ah!” I ejaculated, somewhat amazed, I own. “And number twenty-eight?”
“That was a carrot, and it held a really valuable ring—a ruby surrounded by diamonds. If you remember, I once spoke to you of this ring. It was the property of young Mr. Chittenden and worn by him while he was in this village. He disappeared on his way to the railway station, having taken, as many can vouch, the short detour by Lost Man’s Lane, which would lead him directly by Mother Jane’s cottage.”
“You thrill me,” said I, keeping down with admirable self-possession my own thoughts in regard to this matter. “And what of No. ten, beyond which she said she could not count?”
“In ten was your twenty-five-cent piece, and in various other vegetables, small coins, whose value taken collectively would not amount to a dollar. The only numbers which seemed to make any impression on her mind were those connected with these crimes. Very good evidence, Miss Butterworth, that Mother Jane holds the clue to this matter, even if she is not responsible for the death of the individuals represented by this property.”
“Certainly,” I acquiesced, “and if you examined her after her return from the Knollys mansion last night you would probably have found upon her some similar evidence of her complicity in the last crime of this terrible series. It would needs have been small, as Silly Rufus neither indulged in the brass trinkets sold by the old peddler nor the real jewelry of a well-to-do man like Mr. Chittenden.”
“Silly Rufus?”
“He was the last to disappear from these parts, was he not?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And as such, should have left some clue to his fate in the hands of this old crone, if her motive in removing him was, as you seem to think, entirely that of gain.”
“I did not say it was entirely so. Silly Rufus would be the last person anyone, even such a non compos mentis as Mother Jane, would destroy for hope of gain.”
“But what other motive could she have? And, Mr. Gryce, where could she bestow the bodies of so many unfortunate victims, even if by her great strength she could succeed in killing them?”
“There you have me,” said he. “We have not been able as yet to unearth any bodies. Have you?”
“No,” said I, with some little show of triumph showing through my disdain, “but I can show you where to unearth one.”
He should have been startled, profoundly startled. Why wasn’t he? I asked this of myself over and over in the one instant he weighed his words before answering.
“You have made some definite discoveries, then,” he declared. “You have come across a grave or a mound which you have taken for a grave.”
I shook my head.
“No mound,” said I. Why should I not play for an instant or more with his curiosity? He had with mine.
“Ah, then, why do you talk of unearthing? No one has told you where you can lay hand on Silly Rufus’ body, I take it.”
“No,” said I. “The Knollys house is not inclined to give up its secrets.”
He started, glancing almost remorsefully first at the tip, then at the head of the cane he was balancing in his hand.
“It’s too bad,” he muttered, “but you’ve been led astray, Miss Butterworth—excusably, I acknowledge, quite excusably, but yet in a way to give you quite wrong conclusions. The secret of the Knollys house—But wait a moment. Then you were not locked up in your room last night?”
“Scarcely,” I returned, wavering between the doubts he had awakened by his first sentence and the surprise which his last could not fail to give me.
“I might have known they would not be likely to catch you in a trap,” he remarked. “So you were up
