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126 “I don’t know—nor how he came to believe they were hidden here.”

“Perhaps Miss Croydon told him,” I suggested. “Perhaps she asked him to get them for her.”

“No, I don’t think so; if she’d done that, she’d have told him where she hid them. I think it much more probable that they contain some secret of his, and he’s concluded she hasn’t got them because she hasn’t produced them against him. And he’s reasoned correctly in supposing that if she hasn’t got them, she must have hidden them here.”

It was a good guess; an adroit one.

“The question is,” added Godfrey, looking about him, “where did she hide them?”

I looked about, too, but I could think of no place which had escaped Tremaine’s scrutiny.

“Perhaps it was in the table she sat before,” said Godfrey, at last. “It must have been some place near at hand, instantly suggesting itself, for Simmonds and I were in the inner room only a minute or two.”

“The table had only a single drawer,” I said, “and I looked through it the night I engaged the rooms. It was empty. I don’t see why Miss Croydon should have concealed the clippings at all; it seems to me that the most natural thing for her to do would be to put them in her pocket.”

“No doubt,” agreed Godfrey; “yet in a moment of excitement like that, the natural thing might be the very last thing she’d think of. Besides, she might have feared that she was to be placed under arrest, and of course she wouldn’t want the clippings to be found on her. But there’s no use sitting here