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“My dear Nick, no one who hasn’t studied scarabs can tell one from another—least of all, a little bob-haired girl with a turn-up nose. Why not suspect the Chinaman. He had the job of finding the thing, I’m told. Say he found it, and—those Orientals are tricky, and they know about curios—say he made the substitution. How’s that?”

“I don’t think he has seen it?”

“But you don’t know that he hasn’t.”

“No. Oh, well, I dare say it’s the same old scarab. Also I guess they’ll arrest the little girl soon, and then there’ll be a sensation. Somehow I hate to see her arrested. A mere child”

“How can they arrest her? They’ve no real evidence.”

“They hold that they have. The Chinaman saw her bending over the body. He saw her take the scarab, which afterward was found hidden in her room. Also, the pair of stained gloves are her size. Also the bronze book-end has been photographed for finger prints—and it shows the prints of Miss Cutler’s fingers.”

“I don’t believe it!” Andrew Barham sat up straight, and spoke so strongly that Nelson looked at him curiously.

“Why, Drew, what’s the great excitement?”

“Only that I’m a champion of women—all women, as you know. And I think it’s outrageous to arrest that girl—almost a child, you tell me—for a crime of that sort!”

“Don’t say ‘of that sort’ for it’s just the sort of weapon a woman would use.”

“But why, why would that girl kill Maddy? Why—answer me that!”

“Good Lord, I can’t answer that! If I could, I’d have the whole problem solved. Will you stop fumbling in that