Before Patsy could reach her she sank sobbing to the floor.  She proceeded to pour out an incoherent confession, in which little was clear but the name of Horace Richmond, and the fact that the girl “loved him still.”

“I’ve been waiting for this,” said Horace, with a brutal sneer.  “Trust a woman and lose the game.  Well, it’s all up.  I loved you, Millie, but not enough to marry you without the jewels.  So I schemed for the transfer, and I have failed.”

“It was Annie O’Neil whom you followed last night, Patsy,” said Nick.  “Who was the men?”

“John Gilder,” gasped the terrified girl.

“And you played ghost?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But how about my shooting?” asked Patsy.  “How does Annie O’Neil happen to be alive?”

“Read that from Chick,” said Nick, producing a paper.  “He’s made some discoveries in the colonel’s house to-day while we were all away.

“He’s found the ghost.  It seems that this girl was inside of a hollow dummy.

“She stood over a trap door.  Just as soon as she had shown her face, she dropped the veil, and went through the trap.”

“The dummy still continued to stand there, and you shot at it.  Two of your bullets flattened on its steel braces.  The rest went through.

“John Gilder flashed the light.  When he turned it off, the dummy was hauled down through the trap, and hidden in a place that neither you nor I found, Patsy.”

Colonel Richmond seemed to be in a trance.

“But the mysterious force,” he said, at last.  “The injury to yourself and your assistant.  How do you explain that?”

“It was done by John Gilder swinging a sand-bag on a string at the end of a pole which he poked through one of those panels.

“It couldn’t be seen in that dim light, and it made a fearful weapon.  It’s a wonder that he didn’t knock our heads off.”

“I thought that I heard something whiz,” muttered Patsy.

“And yet I heard her voice this morning,” said the colonel.  “She said ‘consent.’”

“No, she didn’t; I said it,” rejoined Nick.  “I’m something of a ventriloquist.”

“How was the affair managed at the safe deposit vault?” asked the colonel, after a pause.

“Why, Horace took the clasp out of the box and put it into your pocket.  You really saw it, only he made you think afterward that you didn’t.

“After I had searched him he picked your pocket and got the clasp.  Then he wrapped it in paper.

“I picked his pocket to make matters even, and substituted my knife similarly wrapped up.

“When we got to this house he gave the knife to Annie O’Neil, who put it on Miss Stevens’ pillow when she went upstairs to call Mrs. Stevens.”

“You have not explained the robberies at my house,” said Colonel Richmond.

“I’ll do that over there.  Is the rest of it clear?  Has anybody a question to ask?”