"Me, too, dar-rling," chimed in Irene. "I'll soon be a matron, you know, and I'll find you some adequate male, up-to-date though honest, whom we'll persuade to forget and forgive."
Aunt Helene, her breath regained, pleaded further: "Listen to this before you leap, my child. Despite what your grandfather left in the way of puzzle-charts, Judge Allen and I, acting in your interest, have at last satisfied ourselves that there is nothing--quite nothing of the slightest material value to you buried in Central Park. We didn't intend to tell you so soon, but all last night the judge had a crew of men working at a spot indicated in the cryptogram."
"And how did he get the instructions of the cryptogram?" Jane enquired. "No one saw it before it was stolen but me."
"_Jane_, that you should speak to me in that suspicious tone! Had I been given opportunity, I should have told you that yesterday the contents of your antique snuff-box were secretly exchanged for the large reward which I offered in your name, presumedly by the thief who stole it from my safe."
"You don't say, ma'am? So! It was, eh?" The Westerner was rather explosive from acute interest.
The matron ignored him. "The judge, Jane, followed directions and discovered a crock--large and open topped, like the sort dill pickles are made in. But, alas, it contained nothing but a half-witted old man's keepsakes--scraps of his unutterable poetry, ribbon-tied parcels of yellowed love-letters, pressed flowers and a wisp of some woman's hair. Were your father alive, I'd feel I should take some of my own fortune and make restitution of his frauds upon the collateral heirs. But since he's dead and gone, I don't exactly feel----"
"Not altogether gone, Helene, yet not in need of your restitution!"
At the voice, Mrs. Sturgis smothered a scream; turned; stared.
Through the portières that closed off the hall stepped Curtis Lauderdale, led from the taxi by the driver thereof in answer to Pape's signal from the window.
Verily an apparition did he look to the four who had accepted the report of his death. Mrs. Sturgis, with hands grasping behind her, was backing as though from a ghost. The little jurist did not move, but all the apple color had departed his cheeks. Irene's red-rouged lips could not pale, but at least her mouth was agape. Harford stiffened, as though preparing for attack.