When the cigars were drawing nicely we were ready to hear the story.  Not until then did I fully realize what a little fellow Jemmy was.  Now I saw that he was almost a dwarf, little if any over four feet in height, and very slightly built.  His face, shrunken and wrinkled, had that look of prenatural wisdom which dwarfs sometimes have, and his little black eyes were incredibly bright.  He was evidently something of a dandy, for his clothes were immaculate.  I admired again the aplomb with which he accepted the situation.

“Well,” he began, “to make a long story short, I started on this lay just after old Magnus’ death, when a friend of mine in the fortune-tellin’ line told me Mrs. Magnus was a spiritualist.”

“A spiritualist?” I queried, in surprise.

“Oh, yes; had been for years.  That give me my clue, so I—­ah—­got into the house.”

“How?” demanded Godfrey.

“That’s telling.”

“Bribed a servant, of course,” said Godfrey.  “We’ll look them over in the morning.  Go on.”

“I got inside the house, looked over the ground, an’ decided on my line of operation.  I wanted something neat an’ effective, an’ I worked on it a good while before I had it goin’ just right.  There were so many little details.  It took a lot of practice—­these things do—­an’ then I had to remodel the inside of the desk—­shorten up the drawers, an’ make room for myself behind them.  Luckily I’m little, an’ the desk was one of the biggest I ever saw.”

“So you were in the desk?” I asked.

“Sure,” he chuckled.  “Where else?  Lookin’ at you out of one of the pigeon-holes, an’ wonderin’ if I’d better risk it.”

“And you decided you would?”

“Yes,” said Jemmy slyly; “I saw you were scart to death, an’ I was afraid if I didn’t demonstrate for the old lady, I wouldn’t get the money.”

“How did you know she had it?”

“I heard you tell her you’d brought it, down in the parlor.”

“Oh,” I said; “then it was your step I heard in the hall?”

“I guess so, if you heard one.  I just had time to get upstairs an’ make my plant before you came in.  The rest was easy.”

“But the ashes?” I said.

“Flicked out through a pigeonhole.  That’s what took practice, to make ’em fall just right.  Also the cigar.”

“And the odor of tobacco?”

He got a little vial out of his pocket, uncorked it, and again I caught the sweet and heavy odor of Peter Magnus’ cigar.

“An’ here’s a fine point I’m proud of,” said Jemmy.  “I had this made from half a dozen of Magnus’ cigars I found in a box in his room.  So the smell was just right.  I thought for a while of showin’ some smoke, but didn’t dare risk it.”

“But the note,” I said.  “That was the cleverest of all.”

Jemmy chuckled and glanced at Godfrey.

“You’ll understand that, Jim,” he said.  “You remember I worked it backward in that National City Bank case.”