“As if I didn’t know, Jimmie boy!  The colonel told me some of it."’

“Did he?  Isn’t he a trump?  Where is he now?”

“Oh, dad carried him off for some long-delayed fishing,” answered Amy, as she and James Darcy left the courtroom before a throng, that could not be restrained from cheering, despite the cries of “Silence!” on the part of the constable.

“But how did he know that Larch killed her?” asked Darcy, as he and Amy rode away in her car, amid the cheers of the throng outside the county building.

“By the process of elimination, so he told dad.  He never for an instant really believed you guilty, Jimmie boy, even after the discovery of the electric wires, though he let those two detectives think he did.”

“And what about Singa Phut and Harry King?”

“Oh, they were only incidents, so Colonel Ashley says,” went on the happy girl, as the automobile rolled along.  “Even that funny Spotty was ‘eliminated’, as our dear old fisherman calls it, when he explained about the diamond cross.  And as for Mr. Grafton, though he was mixed up in the jewel part of the mystery, he was only acting to help Miss Ratchford, as she wants to be called.  Poor girl, she’s had a hard time, too!  I hope she finds as much happiness as—­”

“As who?” asked Darcy, as Amy hesitated.

“As I have,” came the gentle answer, as Amy gazed with shining eyes at the man beside her.

Langford Larch told everything in the brief time left him between his fatal leap and the passing of his soul to a higher judgment than that of the county courts.  Some time before the events leading to the separation, a meeting between his wife and Grafton had been witnessed by one of Larch’s hotel employees, who told of it, magnifying its importance.  Larch’s jealous disposition was inflamed, and there was a stormy scene between him and his wife.  He knocked her down, and that was the end, as far as she was concerned.  She told him she would leave him.  She admitted that she still cared for Grafton, but denied any intimacy with him.  Then came the legal separation.

Before this, however, Larch had missed his wife’s diamond cross, and charged her with having disposed of it.  During their final interview she told the truth, of how it had been stepped on, and that Grafton had taken it to be repaired.  It was then that Larch saw his opportunity for getting possession of the valuable stones, for his debts were pressing, and, though it was suspected by few, he needed a large sum in cash.

One night, partly intoxicated, which was unusual for him, and perhaps on this occasion done in desperation, Larch called at the jewelry store.  Mrs. Darcy happened to come downstairs as he arrived, and, knowing him well, admitted him, though the store had long been closed.  In one hand she held the Indian watch, perhaps picked up idly from the repair table.  In the other hand was the diamond cross.