“Now, the Jones-Green fire, the Quadrangle fire, the Slawson Building fire, and the rest, have all been set for one purpose—­to collect insurance.  I may as well say right here that some people are in bad in this case, but that others are in worse.  Miss Wend was originally a party to the scheme.  Only the trouble with Miss Wend was that she was too shrewd to be fooled.  She insisted that she have her full share of the pickings.  In that case it seems to have been the whole field against Miss Wend, not a very gallant thing, nor yet according to the adage about honour among thieves.

“A certain person whose name I am frank to say I do not know—­yet--conceived the idea of destroying the obligations of the Stacey companies to Miss Wend as well as the incriminating evidence which she held of the ‘firebug trust,’ of which she was a member up to this time.  The plan only partly succeeded.  The chief coup, which was to destroy the Stacey store into the bargain, miscarried.

“What was the result?  Miss Wend, who had been hand in glove with the ‘trust,’ was now a bitter enemy, perhaps would turn state’s evidence.  What more natural than to complete the conspiracy by carrying out the coup and at the same time get rid of the dangerous enemy of the conspirators?  I believe that Miss Wend was lured under some pretext or other to the Stacey store on the night of the big fire.  The person who wrote the second and third ’A.  Spark’ letters did it.  She was murdered with this deadly instrument”—­Craig laid the letter-file on the table—­“and it was planned to throw the entire burden of suspicion on her by asserting that there was a shortage in the books of her department.”

“Pooh!” exclaimed Stacey, smoking complacently at his cigar.  “We have been victimised in those fires by people who have grudges against us, labour unions and others.  This talk of an arson trust is bosh—­yellow journalism.  More than that, we have been systematically robbed by a trusted head of a department, and the fire at Stacey’s was the way the thief took to cover—­er—­her stealings.  At the proper time we shall produce the bookkeeper Douglas and prove it.”

Kennedy fumbled in the drawer of the desk, then drew forth a long strip of paper covered with figures.  “All the Stacey companies,” he said, “have been suffering from the depression that exists in the trade at present.  They are insolvent.  Glance over that, Stacey.  It is a summary of the preliminary report of the accountants of the district attorney who have been going over your books to-day.”

Stacey gasped.  “How did you get it?  The report was not to be ready until nine o’clock, and it is scarcely a quarter past now.”

“Never mind how I got it.  Go over it with the adjusters, anybody.  I think you will find that there was no shortage in Miss Wend’s department, that you were losing money, that you were in debt to Miss Wend, and that she would have received the lion’s share of the proceeds of the insurance if the firebug scheme had turned out as planned.”