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 not quite able to believe his eyes: "You took them?"

"I—I stole them," the excited man half-whispered.

"Why?" questioned Hampstead, still wrestling with his astonishment.

"Because I am short in my accounts," Rollie shuddered, passing a despairing hand across his eyes. "I have to have money to-day, or I am ruined."

"But you could not turn these into money. You must have been beside yourself."

"No!" replied the excited man, with husky, explosive utterance; "the scheme was all right. Spider Welsh was going to handle 'em for me. We were to split four ways. But the Red Lizard fell down."

"The Red Lizard?" interrupted the minister; for he knew the man who bore the suggestive title.

"Yes. He was to hang a rope down from the cornice on the roof of the hotel, opposite her window, so it would look like an outside job, and he didn't do it. I got the diamonds easy enough—easier than I expected—you know how that was, with all those people coming and going in that room. But I went to bed and couldn't sleep for thinking about the rope. I got up before daylight and went down to see if it was there. So help me God, there's no rope swinging. That makes it an inside job; it puts it up to the guests. By a process of elimination, they'll come down to me. I am ruined any way you look at it, and the shock will kill mother!"

The minister studied the face of his caller critically. Did he love his mother enough to greatly care on her account, or was this merely an afterthought?

"What am I going to do?" the shaken Rollie gasped hoarsely, his eyes fixing themselves in helpless appeal upon the clergyman.

"The thing to do is clear," announced the minister bluntly. "Take these diamonds straight back to Miss