“What colour did you say these ’ere Fidgetty islanders was?” inquired Mr. Vickers, with truculent curiosity.

“You get out,” roared Stobell, rising.  “At once.  D’ye hear me?”

Mr. Vickers backed with some haste towards the door.  His daughter followed slowly.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, turning sharply on Stobell.  “I don’t believe the ship was wrecked at all.”

Mr. Stobell sat gasping at her.  “What?” he stammered.  “W h-a-a-t?”

“I don’t believe it was wrecked,” repeated Selina, wildly.  “You’ve got the treasure all right, and you’re keeping it quiet and telling this tale to do me out of my share.  I haven’t done with you yet.  You wait!”

She flung out into the hall, and Mr. Vickers, after a lofty glance at Mr. Stobell, followed her outside.

“And now we’ll go and hear what Mr. Tredgold has to say,” she said, as they walked up the road.  “And after that, Mr. Chalk.”

Mr. Tredgold was just starting for the office when they arrived, but, recognising the justice of Miss Vickers’s request for news, he stopped and gave his version of the loss of the Fair Emily.  In several details it differed from that of Mr. Stobell, and he looked at her uneasily as she took out pencil and paper and made notes.

“If you want any further particulars you had better go and see Mr. Stobell,” he said, restlessly.  “I am busy.”

“We’ve just been to see him,” replied Miss Vickers, with an ominous gleam in her eye.  “You say that the boat was two or three hundred yards away when the ship sank?”

“More or less,” was the cautious reply.

“Mr. Stobell said about half a mile,” suggested the wily Selina.

“Well, perhaps that would be more correct,” said the other.

“Half a mile, then?”

“Half a mile,” said Mr. Tredgold, nodding, as she wrote it down.

“Four yards was what Mr. Stobell said,” exclaimed Selina, excitedly.  “I’ve got it down here, and father heard it.  And you make the time it happened and a lot of other things different.  I don’t believe that you were any more shipwrecked than I was.”

“Not so much,” added the irrepressible Mr. Vickers.

Mr. Tredgold walked to the door.  “I am busy,” he said, curtly.  “Good morning.”

Miss Vickers passed him with head erect, and her small figure trembling with rage and determination.  By the time she had cross-examined Mr. Chalk her wildest suspicions were confirmed.  His account differed in several particulars from the others, and his alarm and confusion when taxed with the discrepancies were unmistakable.

Binchester rang with the story of her wrongs, and, being furnished with three different accounts of the same incident, seemed inclined to display a little pardonable curiosity.  To satisfy this, intimates of the gentlemen most concerned were provided with an official version, which Miss Vickers discovered after a little research was compiled for the most part by adding all the statements together and dividing by three.  She paid another round of visits to tax them with the fact, and, strong in the justice of her cause, even followed them in the street demanding her money.