rang for a telegraph boy.
"Come in, now, and tell your story--all but this!"

Holding the shivering lad while he sent a brace of messengers for
the detective chief and the Fidelity Company's expert, Arthur Ferris
muttered, "Is it murder or a daring robbery? Is it flight? Has he
discovered his rights and robbed Peter to pay Paul? Old Hugh must
come, and until then, silence!"

When the noonday sun burned down upon Manhattan Island, a thousand
offices had received the message:

"Look out for Randall Clayton, absconding cashier of the Western
Trading Company. Age 28, height 5 feet 11 inches; gray eyes, brown
hair, well built, weight about 170; speaks French and some German;
born Detroit; slight Western accent. Missing since Saturday noon,
July 2, with $150,000 currency and $100,000 endorsed cheques. Watch
all trains and steamers. Photographs by mail to-morrow. Presumably
alive; no woman in the case."

And in the spacious rooms of the Western Trading Company the
usual business was now moving on, while a detective sat on guard
in Clayton's office, and another in his deserted rooms, where the
Danube picture smiled down upon the callous stranger, who murmured,
"The old story, 'Cards, women, the Tenderloin, Wall Street, and
fast life!' Another man gone to hell with his eyes open."

But in the mob of reporters now filling the affable treasurer's
room there was the ball of angry contention tossed vigorously too
and fro.

Reporter Snooks of the Earth coldly bluffed Sears of the Ledger
with a bet, "Two to one on his skipping out; even money on a murder;
even money on a bunco."

And so "lightly they spoke" of the man who had yielded up his
unstained honor in a mad chivalry for the sake of a woman whose
love had innocently led him to a horrible taking off!

Within the manager's room, the preliminary inquisition was rapidly
moving on. Arthur Ferris, with burning eyes gazing intently as each
word fell from the lips of the frightened witnesses.

It was while this drama was being played that the "Fuerst Bismarck"
swept grandly up the North River, and the returning lawyer tourist,
Jack Witherspoon, hastened up town, eager to meet his client.

"I will prospect a little," mused the cautious Witherspoon, as he
registered at the Hoffman House. "Somebody may know me; and no
human being must see Clayton and I together in New York! One chance
spy and Hugh Worthington would be on his defense, and I would then
lose my place in a jif