Jimmie Dale smiled a little wearily.

“It was simple enough,” he said.  “Old Isaac had had his eyes on those rubies for a long time.  The easiest way of getting them was through you.  The revolver he gave you before you entered Sagosto’s was loaded with blank cartridges, the blood you saw was the old, old trick—­a punctured bladder of red pigment concealed under the vest.”

“Let us get out of here!” Burton shuddered again.  “Let us get out of here—­at once—­now.  If we’re found here, we’ll be accused of—­that!”

“There is no hurry,” Jimmie Dale answered quietly.  “I have told you that no one is liable to come here to-night—­and whoever did this certainly will not raise an alarm.  And besides, there is still the matter of the rubies—­Burton.”

“Yes,” said Burton, with a quick intake of his breath.

“Yes—­the rubies—­what are you going to do with them?  I—­I had forgotten them.  You’ll—­” He stopped, stared at Jimmie Dale, and burst into a miserable laugh.  “I’m a fool, a blind fool!” he moaned.  “It does not matter what you do with them.  I forgot Sagosto.  When they find Isaac here, Sagosto will either tell his story, which will be enough to convict me of this night’s work, the real murder, even though I’m innocent; or else he’ll blackmail me just as Isaac did.”

Jimmie Dale shook his head.

“You are doing Isaac’s cunning an injustice,” he said grimly.  “Sagosto was only a tool, one of many that old Isaac had in his power—­and, for that matter, as likely as any one else to have had a hand in Isaac’s murder to-night.  Sagosto saw you once when Isaac brought you into his place—­not because Isaac wanted Sagosto to see you, but because he wanted you to see Sagosto.  Do you understand?  It would make the story that Sagosto came to him with the tale of the murder the next day ring true.  Sagosto, however, did not go to old Isaac the next day to tell about any fake murder—­naturally.  Sagosto would not know you again from Adam—­neither does he know anything about the rubies, nor what old Isaac’s ulterior motives were.  He was paid for his share in the game in old Isaac’s usual manner of payment probably—­by a threat of exposure for some old-time offence, that Isaac held over him, if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.”

Burton’s hand brushed his eyes.

“Yes,” he muttered.  “Yes—­I see it now.”

Jimmie Dale stooped down, picked up the paper from the floor in which the wig and beard had been wrapped, walked back with it, and replaced it in the cupboard.  And then, with his back to Burton again, he took the case of gems from his pocket, opened it, and laid it on the cupboard shelf.  Also from his pocket came that thin metal case, and from the case, with a pair of tweezers that obviated the possibility of telltale finger prints, a gray, diamond-shaped piece of paper, adhesive on one side that, cursed by the distracted authorities in every police headquarters on both sides of the Atlantic, and raved at by a virulent press whose printed reproductions had made it familiar in every household in the land—­was the insignia of the Gray Seal.  He moistened the adhesive side, dropped it from the tweezers to his handkerchief, and pressed it down firmly on the inside of the cover of the jewel case.  He put both cases back in his pockets, and returned to Burton.