econd order to join her. I must let her know why I linger."

There were a dozen attendants waiting outside, for the accountants,
detectives and police were to be busied, coming and going, all the
night. Ferris had already called Einstein, waiting now on his own
special orders, when he changed his mind. "I'll trust no one now."

He decided to go to the telegraph office himself. He suddenly
remembered the influence of the robbery and Worthington's untimely
death upon the value of the Western Trading Company's stock.

"Damn it!" he growled. "I may be left a millionaire or a pauper!
I don't know which; and I have no ready money."

But the presence of Senator Durham at Newport gave him a gleam of
light in these dark skies. "I'll telegraph to Durham (in cipher) to
sell a big block of this stock short at the opening of the Board.
Hugh's death will carry it down twenty or thirty dollars a share,
and then it will be back to the normal in a week."

Suddenly he remembered the waiting Einstein. "Tell me," hoarsely
whispered Ferris as he dragged the lad back into the private office,
"What do you think of all this? You knew Mr. Clayton's ways!"

"What's my opinion worth?" bluntly said the watchful Emil. "This!"
said Ferris, handing him a roll of bills. "Then," fearfully whispered
the artful boy, "it ain't no case of skippin' out. I believe some
of the fools in the office got a braggin' over their lunches about
our heavy bank business, and some smart gang has 'done up' Mr.
Clayton. I don't think he's alive. He wasn't the man to 'give up'
easy. He was 'dead square.' There wasn't no woman in the case. I
could tell stories of some of the other gentlemen. No! Clayton's
been hit good an' hard!"

The boy trembled as he spoke. Ferris laughed contemptuously. "Here,
in New York!"

The stubborn boy answered: "Look a-here! I'm only a poor working
boy! There's twenty squares within a half mile where a man's life
isn't safe if he flashes a ten-dollar bill. Clayton was followed,
and done up for fair. An' the gang an' the swag are hundreds of
miles away! That's how!"

"But where would they hide him?" answered Ferris, shivering at the
boy's matter-of-fact coldness.

"RIVER!" emphatically said Emil. "Five to six hundred floaters
picked up every year. Nobody knows; nobody cares!

"Now," sagely concluded Emil, "if Clayton could have been led off,
then it's dead easy; but he started straight for the bank, and
never got there. The gang m