“Some hobo who’ll never be missed. Hamlin got him there on the pretext of giving him a job, slapped him over the conk and fired the joint. Simple, Duchess.

“And you think Kurt Bergstrom was in on the hoax?” Katie pursued.

“Cinch.” Spike nodded gleefully. “The way I dope it, the time of the fire was prearranged to put Bergstrom in the clear. John Hamlin is a weak sister and the whole plot was cooked up by Bergstrom and Mrs. Hamlin. Hamlin is safely holed up somewhere, and when the heat is off he and the dame’ll scram to South America with forty grand.”

“And the other forty grand?”

“Into Kurt Bergstrom’s sock. Well, what do you think of it, Duchess?”

“I think the whole thing,” Katie promptly retorted, “is the silly machination of a disordered brain.”

While we follow the convoluted “thrill of the chase” for the boys as it breaks down in the face of increasing chaos, it is not until the end of “The Duchess Pulls a Fast One” that we are let in on the true extent of her “pay off.” After the behind-the-scenes build-up throughout the bulk of the story, we are led to the orchestrated, clashing, contradicting, and correct conclusion in which — with a twist here, a turn there, and a surprise ending from out of nowhere — all characters are brought together, the scenarios played out, and every loose end is tied up in a bow.

And if we ever doubted before, we suddenly stand united with each principal wondering “where we ever got the idea that the Duchess was silly, and dumb, and slow on the pick-up.”