"Well," I drawled, not very sure of my ground, "she may have found your aunt dead, and in a fright----"
"Oh, that won't wash," he interrupted in a somewhat common way. "You swore at the inquest, that you were attracted into this room by a groan from my aunt, in which case she could not have been dead when this lady went up the stairs."
"That is true," I admitted, "but I don't hold a brief for the escaped lady, remember."
"You speak as though you did," he retorted and went on with his sorting. "Has anything been heard of her?"
"Nothing. I found my motor car in the field; but the lady has vanished."
"Don't you think," Striver raised himself up to ask this question, "that she could be traced by means of that white cloak?"
I shrugged in my turn and fenced, as I was not going to admit the truth. "I daresay the cloak was noticeable enough. All the same, she has _not_ been traced. Now, she never will be. I should not be surprised if the police gave up the case."
The young man rose quickly. "No," he said promptly, "I intend to offer a reward."
"If she is guilty, why not?" he asked bluntly, "But if you will have the truth, Mr. Vance, I don't care either one way or the other about a possible hanging. I want to find the glass eye."
"I--I--I suppose so," he muttered in a hesitating manner, then burst out: "Yes, indeed, I _do_ want to find the glass eye. There's a fortune connected with it, Mr. Vance--a large fortune."
"Oh!" I could not help betraying surprise. "So this was why Mrs. Caldershaw attached such value to it?"
"Exactly. In some way--I don't exactly know how--that eye reveals the whereabouts of the fortune I speak of."
"Humph. Do you mean to say that Mrs. Caldershaw concealed her money and concealed its whereabouts in her glass eye?"
"Yes, I do, in a way. That is, this fortune does not consist of my aunt's savings. I have those and the shop also. But when she lived at Burwain, she talked of a large fortune--some fifty thousand pounds, she mentioned on one occasion--which was concealed somewhere."
"I can't say. But my father, her brother--he's dead now--was always bothering her about the money. She never would tell him anything, but said that when she died he could learn all he wanted to know from the glass eye. As my father has passed over, of course the glass eye along with the money comes to me,--the fortune also. Fifty thousand pounds!" He raised his arms with an ecstatic expression. "What couldn't I do with such a heap of coin, Mr. Vance. Why I could marry----" He halted, cast an uneasy look on me, and again began to sort the letters.