“I didn’t say I suspected any one,” he made troubled answer. “I’d rather not talk about it at all, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind,” she protested. “Why, Clive, all of us have been living here in this corner of the Berkshires every summer since we were born! We’ve all known one another all our lives. It’s—it’s a terrible thing to feel that one of us may be a thief. Won’t you tell me whom you suspect?”

Clive looked glumly down into her appealingly upraised face for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and spoke.

“You’ve asked for it,” said he, speaking between his shut teeth and with growing reluctance. “I’d give ten years’ income not to tell you—and I’d give ten years of my life not to believe it’s he.”

“Who?”

He hesitated. Then, a tinge of evasion in his unhappy voice, he replied:

“Every one of us was robbed.... Except one.”

[108]She frowned, perplexed.

[108]

“What’s that got to do with it?” she asked. “Thax was the only one of us who wasn’t robbed. That doesn’t answer my question at all.”

He said nothing.

“Clive Creede!” she burst forth, incredulously. “Do you mean to say you are—are—imbecile enough to believe such a thing of Thax? Why, I— Clive!”

There was a world of amazed contempt in her young voice. The man winced. Yet he held his ground doggedly.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said. “I know, as well as you do, that Thax didn’t do it through dishonesty or because he needed the money. He has more cash now than he can spend. But—”

“Then why—”

“Either he did it as a mammoth practical joke or else—”

“Thax is not a practical joker,” she interpolated. “No one but a fool plays practical jokes.”

“Or else,” he resumed, “he did it to get rid of his unwelcome guests. That is the most likely solution.”

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