the West. There's not a shadow on the name
of the missing man."

While the audience eyed each other, the three police officials
present cried in accord: "Good; double the reward. NOW YOU'RE ON
THE RIGHT TRACK."

"I second the motion," quietly said the pale-faced Witherspoon. "I
do also," slowly said Ferris, "and I offer the amendment that this
action takes effect when Mr. Worthington's executors arrive and
authorize this important step."

In sheer impotency to quarrel, the puzzled meeting adjourned, and
Arthur Ferris, now conspicuously alone, was left to chatter with
Policeman Dennis McNerney on the lonely street corner below.

"Well!" said Ferris impatiently, as a fifty-dollar bill changed
hands. "All I can tell you," whispered the policeman, "is that
Lawyer Witherspoon is at the Buckingham. He received no visitors
but his friend, a young doctor.

"Physician's name, William Atwater, M.D. Mail and telegrams he gets
at down-town office, your company's lawyers. And he spends all his
time running around at nights with Atwater or locked up with old
Stillwell in his den down town.

"It's a poor harvest, Dennis," gruffly said Ferris.

"That's all there's in it," stolidly said the man. "Shall I keep
up the watch?"

"Yes, as usual," sadly replied Ferris, as he sped up Broadway to
the Fifth Avenue. The policeman snorted his contempt, when Ferris
had turned the corner.

"A beggarly fifty! By God! I'll hold the boy down. Somewhere
in that funny little joint of a drug-store the secret lies. In a
couple of weeks I can begin work on Timmins; but the office boy,
Einstein, waited personally on Clayton! When his fear wears off,
I'll trap him. He is spending money too freely. Where does that
come from?"

As McNerney wandered on, he was as ignorant of Einstein's continued
milking of Ferris' purse, as Ferris was of Jack Witherspoon's
treasured clues and as all the knowing ones were of Arthur Ferris'
crafty course in robbing Randall Clayton's desk of the tell-tale
dispatches.

Einstein's greedy fingers were now always in Ferris' purse, for
well the Jewish boy knew that Ferris feared to disclose the theft
of the private papers. And so he filled the schemer's ears with
unmeaning babble about Randall Clayton's night life in New York.

"In the dark! In the dark!" muttered Ferris, as he threw himself
down on his bed. "Did Clayton ever start for Bay Ridge? Did he hide
the money and flee to Europe? Did he go West to meet Wo