e contact
with Ferris. "I must go around there and show up at once! They
would surely see my arrival in the papers!"

He had just finished his professional toilet when a telegram was
brought to his door. He tore it open with a wild anxiety.

"No news of friend here. Have sent dispatch as agreed. There is
sealed box of valuables here for you, deposited a month ago by your
friend; sent by special express commission. Telegraph your directions."

He sought the telegraph office and wired orders to have the deposit
instantly expressed to him, at Adams & Co.'s general office. "Take
receipt in my name for twenty-five thousand dollars' value," was
his last prudent order.

And then, jumping into a coupe, he departed for the Western Trading
Company's office. "They will have the telegram," thought Witherspoon.
"Thank God! Ferris is a Columbia College man, and no member of our
'frat.' I can tell him that some of our New York chapter proposed
to celebrate my return, unknown to me. There's Doctor Billy Atwater.
I must look him up to-night. I can leave him here on guard while
I go and face Hugh Worthington. Either Hugh or Ferris has put up
this job!"

Suddenly an awful thought came to him.

"My God! Have they made away with him?"

He saw his course plainly now. The untiring pursuit of the wolf,
the silence of the crouching panther!

"Never!" he proudly declared in his heart. "Randall Clayton a thief!
Never! I will be the second shadow of Mr. Arthur Ferris. If any
one has the key of this mystery, he has. Clayton never went away
willingly. It would be his ruin for life to let his name be blackened.
And, the money! Who has it?"

The prominence of Mr. John Witherspoon as the Detroit counsel of
the Trading Company's great syndicate carrying agents insured his
instant admission to the general manager's room. There was a sober
gathering of a dozen magnates, and Arthur Ferris sprang up, somewhat
disconcerted, when he saw Witherspoon's anxious face.

The young vice-president left the detective captain, Manager Wade,
the haggard old Somers, and two great lawyers, and drew Witherspoon
away into Randall Clayton's deserted rooms.

"Where did you drop from?" curtly demanded Ferris. "I've been some
months in Europe," simply said Witherspoon, now wearing the oily
mask of his profession. "I arrived on the 'Fuerst Bismarck' to-day,
and was going to take to-night's train West. But some fellows of
my college 'frat' had fixed up a 'surprise