When Jesse and Nancy returned to the Fisks' house, their arrival was eagerly awaited. Jesse repeated the story of his adventure one more time. The girls were very sympathetic. They wanted to know if he had any bruises or cuts from being tackled by Horace but he insisted there was nothing wrong with him. Mr. Fisk intervened at that point to insist that it was getting late and they had to be off to bed. Once upstairs though, the girls were too excited by developments in the case to follow that wise fatherly advice.

"I don't know if we should be discussing the case without Jesse's presence," Nancy began.

"But you don't really trust him and neither do I," George completed the sentence.

Nancy gave her a glare of disapproval. "That's not what I was going to say. Jesse has this tendency to jump to conclusions. I have to shoulder some of the responsibility for that too. We need to go over our thinking again, meticulously this time, so we can get it right. Let's start, maybe not at the beginning, but with the message in the Tom Sawyer."

"We agreed that Podmore fabricated that in order to protect his drug smuggling operation," Bess contributed.

"But remember that we asked Horace about a map from Cyrus Fisk. That could have given him the idea to send us to the cave. He had time to return here, go up the trail, write down the directions, and put the book into the bookcase, long before we found the book."

"Horace is around the house so much," said George, "that we hardly notice when he's here and when he's not. I'm pretty sure though that he was in the house when we were eating dinner and he left with the plumber before Mrs. Podmore arrived."

"So the theory about the book, the cave, and the smuggling, all that, could be correct but with Horace as the culprit and not Mr. Podmore," reasoned Bess.

"He did change his mind about us looking for the gold awfully abruptly," said George.

Nancy continued. "Jesse's story only makes sense if Eberhart is the drug smuggler. He's the one who hid the drugs in the prospector's cabin. Podmore must be the one who found them and removed them. Now Podmore is blackmailing Eberhart. He's making him pay to get the drugs back. At the same time he was trying to cast suspicion on Jesse."

"But of course Horace isn't going to admit that he was blackmailed. So what do the police have to investigate?" wondered George.

"If only we could break into Mr. Podmore's house and find the bags of drugs," said Ivy. "That would settle it."

"Ivy, you're sounding just like Jesse," said George with a grin.

Ivy colored. "It was just an idea that came to the top of my head. I wouldn't really break into his house."

George said in a kindly tone, "We know that, Ivy. I was just kidding you."

"At least now there's enough hint of real crime for the police to be interested," Nancy said. "They're sure to search Podmore's house and the two businesses. Eberhart will be investigated. Maybe our involvement in this case is done."

"I wouldn't count on it," said Bess. "I bet there are still one or two plot twists to go."

Ivy asked, "How do you guys usually solve your cases?"

George laughed. "Well, usually we snoop around constantly until we stumble into the nest of criminals. Then they obligingly tell us all their plans and tie us up. We get rescued or escape and they get arrested. Something along those lines."

"I don't think I want to be tied up," said Ivy.

"Honestly, George," objected Bess, "you make us sound like such helpless ninnies."

"This time let's try to end the case by actually solving it and by being one step ahead of the criminals," said Nancy in a determined voice.