“There’s Hapgood’s whole story knocked silly,” remarked Mr. Emerson complacently.

“But it leaves us just where we were about the person the Clarks’ Emily married.”

“Stanley wouldn’t have telegraphed that she married a Smith if he hadn’t been sure.  He sent that wire from Millsboro, you know.  He must have found something in that vicinity.”

“I’m going to try to get him on the telephone to-night, and then we can join him in Washington tomorrow if he’ll condescend to stay in one spot for a few hours and not keep us chasing over the country after him.”

“That’s Jabez Smith over there now,” the clerk, who had been interested in their search, informed them.

“Jabez Smith!” repeated Roger, his jaw dropped.

“Jabez Smith!” repeated Mr. Emerson.  “Why, he’s dead!”

“Jabez Smith?  The Hapgood woman’s husband?  Father of Mary Smith?  He isn’t dead.  He’s alive and drunk almost every day.”

He indicated a man leaning against the wall of the corridor and Mr. Emerson and Roger approached him.

“Don’t you know the Miss Clarks said they thought that Mary said her father was alive but her uncle interrupted her loudly and said she was ’an orphan, poor kid’?” Roger reminded his grandfather.

“She’s half an orphan; her mother really is dead, the clerk says.”

Jabez Smith acknowledged his identity and received news of his brother-in-law and his daughter with no signs of pleasure.

“What scheming is Hapgood up to now?” he muttered crossly.

“Do you remember what your grandfather and grandmother Leonards’ names were,” asked Mr. Emerson.

The man looked at him dully, as if he wondered what trick there might be in the inquiry, but evidently he came to the conclusion that his new acquaintance was testing his memory, so he pulled himself together and after some mental searching answered, “George Leonard; Sabina Leonard.”

His hearers were satisfied, and left him still supporting the Court House wall with his person instead of his taxes.

Stanley, the long pursued, was caught on the wire, and hailed their coming with delight.  He said that he thought he had all the information he needed and that he had been planning to go home the next day, so they were just in time.

“That’s delightful; he can go with us,” exclaimed Ethel Brown, and Helen and Roger looked especially pleased.

The few hours that passed before they met in Washington were filled with guesses as to whether Stanley had built up the family tree of his cousin Emily so firmly that it could not be shaken.

“We proved this morning that Hapgood’s story was a mixture of truth and lies,” Mr. Emerson said, “but we haven’t anything to replace it.  Our evidence is all negative.”

“Stanley seems sure,” Roger reminded him.

When Stanley met them at the station in Washington he seemed both sure and happy.  He shook hands with them all.