ay have piped him off for months, and
they worked on him, right here in the heart of town."

"Keep your mouth shut. Post me, on the quiet," said Ferris, as he
remembered his telegrams. When Emil Einstein was left alone, he
calmly counted his bills.

"Pretty good throw-off," he murmured. "I must lie low, for the
mother's sake. And--give her a wide berth. It's getting pretty
warm. This fellow's a chump; but the detectives, there's another
breed of rats!" The boy shivered as he thought of the gleaming
handcuffs.

Arthur Ferris had now recovered from the first shock of the tidings
from the West enough to look ahead for the piloting of his own
interests. He smiled grimly. "Business before pleasure!" as he sent
off at the Twenty-third Street general office the tidings which
enabled Senator Durham to turn a cool hundred thousand. "He'll be
down here to-morrow to watch over his stocks! I must wait and see
him before I go West. Besides, I must see Witherspoon and give him
his cue. He knows nothing! He searched the Detroit title and never
even made a kick. His firm passed on the whole matter. I need him
to carry out my future plans."

It seemed to Ferris that his long dispatch to "Miss Alice Worthington"
betrayed too much connubial tenderness. He recast it, and, after
stating that he would leave for Pasco within twenty-four hours,
added:

"Open and read all dispatches sent on to your father from Tacoma.
The company's affairs are paralyzed here. I am in sole control.
Randall Clayton has absconded with a quarter of a million. Missing
since Saturday. Police at work. Telegraph your hotel address.
I will report by wire to-morrow several times. Will be guided by
your telegrams. Am acting under your father's letter of instructions.
Secure all his private papers in case of grave results of injury."

All the weary night Arthur Ferris tossed uneasily upon his bed,
tormented with returning fears as to Hugh Worthington's testamentary
dispositions. "Those old miser hunks are crafty! The girl will
be wax in my hands if I am left to control the money. If she has
the purse-strings I may find her ugly in harness. She has the old
man's blood in her, and blood will tell."

He had not dared to reveal the secret marriage in the decorous
language of his carefully worded dispatch. But one comfort was
left him. "I have the whip hand of them all," he murmured. "I am in
charge, and no one can displace me. Jack Witherspoon knows nothing,
and