I fell into her humor, as I saw that she regarded the position of things as far too serious to permit simple love dalliance. "My dear, I can't tell you unless----"
"I never saw the eye," she interrupted impatiently. "Don't you believe me."
"Yes. You never saw the eye. Was Miss Destiny in the drawing-room?"
"No; we both went up to my bedroom when she came into the house, and I saw her out of the gate just before I returned to the house to meet you and my father. Why do you ask that question? Do you think my aunt----?"
"Oh no. Miss Destiny did not arrive at Mootley until the crime was committed. She could not have got possession of the glass eye. I only wished to be sure that she had not seen it. As she did not enter the drawing-room, and as I have cross-questioned her, it is evident that she knows nothing on that point. Then there's Giles?"
"He is a man who lives at Mootley, and who caught me in the back room with Mrs. Caldershaw's dead body. He came over to see Striver about the lease of the corner shop, and was in the garden of The Lodge. I wondered if he might have placed the glass eye on the table."
"Why should he? Does he know anything of the secret?"
"I don't think so, and indeed he is an honest man, who would not harm anyone, my dear. I don't think Giles had the eye. Then Striver----"
"Oh, Cyrus, he did not go to Mootley until the funeral. Do you suspect him?"
"Not of the murder. But it is just possible that the eye was not taken by the assassin, and that Striver found it when he was in the shop hunting amongst the papers of his late aunt."
"That is a new idea, since you have always believed that the murder was committed for the sake of the eye."
"I don't know what to believe," I said wearily, passing my hand across my forehead. "Still someone must have placed the eye on the table, and why not Striver, who was working in the garden?"
"I don't see--supposing your theory of the murder is true--how he could have got possession of the eye. It might be another one?"
"I don't think so, Gertrude, for in the concave of the eye I saw a piece of white metal--silver, I fancy. On that, I truly believe, the hiding-place of the diamonds is indicated."
"But if Joseph had the eye," she persisted, "although I do not see how he could have got it, he would use it to find the diamonds, and thus would not have placed it on the table."