The Diamond Pin

"Where?" Sam looked utterly blank. "Where's the pin? Nice pin, oh, pinny, pin, pin! Where's the pin? Oh, I know!"

"All right, where?"

"Forgot! All forgot. Nice pin forgot – forgot – forgot – "

"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Lucille, "he doesn't know anything! I don't believe he really took the pin at all. He heard Agnes and Polly talking about it and he thinks he did."

"Oh, yes, Sam took pin!" declared the idiot boy, himself. "Yes, Sam took pin – pinny-pin – beautiful day, beautiful day, beautiful – beautiful day!"

The boy stood babbling. He was not ill-looking, and the pathos of it all made him far from ridiculous. A tall, well-formed lad, his face would have been really attractive, had the light of intelligence blessed it.

But his blue eyes were vacant, his lips were not firm, and his head turned unsteadily from side to side. Yet, now and again, a gleam of cunning showed in his expression, and Fibsy, watching such moments, tried to make him speak rationally.

"Think it up, Sam," he said, kindly. "There! You remember now! So you do! Where did you put the nice pin?"

"In the crack of the floor! In the crack of the floor! In the – "

"Yes, of course you did!" encouraged Stone. "That was a good place. Now, what floor was it? This room?"

"No, oh, nony no! Not this floor, no, no, no – 'nother floor."

But all further effort to learn what floor was unsuccessful. Indeed, they didn't really think the boy had hidden the pin in a floor crack, or at least they could not feel sure of it.

"He never had the pin at all," Lucille asserted, "he heard the others talking about it, probably they said it might be in a crack, and he remembered the idea."

"Keep him on the place," Stone told them, as he prepared to go to see Bannard. "Don't let Sam get away, whatever you do."

The call on Winston Bannard was preceded by a short visit to Detective Hughes.

While the lesser detective was not annoyed or offended at Stone's taking up the case, yet it was part of his professional pride to be able to tell his more distinguished colleague any new points he could get hold of. And, to-day, Hughes had received back from a local handwriting expert the letter that had been sent to Iris.

"And he says," Hughes told the tale, "he says, Barlow does, that that letter is in Win Bannard's writing, but disguised!"

"What!" and Stone eyed the document incredulously.

"Yep, Barlow says so, and he's an expert, he is. See, those twirly y's and those extra long-looped g's are just like these here in a lot of letters of Bannard's."

"Are these in Bannard's writing?"

"Yes, those are all his. You can see from their contents. Now, this here note signed William Ashton has the same peculiarities."

"Yes, I see that. Do you believe Bannard wrote this letter to his cousin?"

"She ain't exactly his cousin, only a half way sort of one."

"I know; never mind that now. Do you think Bannard wrote the note?"

"Yes, I do. I believe Win Bannard is after that pin, so's he can find them jewels – "

"Oh, then you think the pin is a guide to the jewels?"

"Well, it must be, as you say so. 'Tenny rate, the murderer wanted something, awful bad. It never seemed like he was after just money, or he'd 'a' come at night, don't you think so?"

"Perhaps."

"Well, say it was Win, there's nothing to offset that theory. And everything to point toward it. Moreover, there's no other suspect."

"William Ashton? Rodney Pollock?"

"All the same man," opined Hughes, "and all – Winston Bannard!"

"Oh, I don't know – "

"How you going to get around that letter? Can't you see yourself it's Bannard's writing disguised? And not very much disguised, at that. Why, look at the capital W! The one in William and this one in his own signature are almost identical."

"Why didn't he try to disguise them?"

"He did disguise the whole letter, but he forgot now and then. They always do. It's mighty hard, Barlow says, to keep up the disguise all through. They're sure to slip up, and return to their natural formation of the letters here and there."

"I suppose that's so. Shall I confront Bannard with this?"

"If you like. You're in charge. At least, I'm in with you. I don't want to run counter to your ideas in any way."

"Thank you, Mr. Hughes. I appreciate the justice and courtesy of your attitude toward me, and I thank you for it."

"But it don't extend to that boy – that cub of yours!"

"Terence?" Fleming Stone laughed. "All right, I'll tell him to keep out of your way. He'll not bother you, Mr. Hughes."

"Thank you, sir. Shall I go over to the jail with you?"

"No, I'd rather go alone. But as to this theory of yours. You blame Bannard for all the details of this thing? Do you think he kidnapped Miss Clyde last Sunday?"

"I think it was his doing. Of course, the two people who carried her off were merely tools of the master mind. Bannard could have directed them as well as anybody else."

"He could, surely. Now, here's another thing – I want to trace the house where Miss Clyde was taken. Seems to me that would help a lot."

"Lord, man! How can you find that?"

"Do you know any nearby town where there's an insurance agent named Clement Foster?"

"Sure I do; he lives over in Meadville."

"Then Meadville is very likely the place where that house is."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know. But I asked Miss Clyde to think of anything in the room she was in that might be indicative, and she told of a calendar with that agent's name on it. It's only a chance, but it is likely that the calendar was in the same town that the agent lives and works in."