moment ago, had, as I knew he would
at direct mention of his loot, turned sullen, and he started for the San
Jose jail, mum as an oyster.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MILLION-DOLLAR SUITCASE

The Sheriff had gone with his prisoner; Cummings left; and then there
came to me, in the street there before the lock-up, riding with Jim
Edwards in his roadster, a Worth Gilbert I had never known. Quiet he had
been before; but never considerate like this. When I rushed up to him
with my triumph and congratulations, and he put them aside, it was with
a curious gentleness.

"Yes, yes, Jerry; I know. Vandeman turned out to be Clayte." Then,
noticing my bewilderment, "You see, Jim let it slip that Barbara's hurt.
Where is she?" And Edwards leaned around to explain.

"When we came past Capehart's, and she wasn't there, I--"

"Oh, that's only a scratch," I hurried to assure the boy. "Barbara'll be
all right."

"So Jim said," he agreed soberly. "I'm afraid you're both lying to me."

"All right," I climbed in beside him. "We'll go and see. She's up at
your house--waiting for you."

As we headed away for the other end of town, he spoke again, half
interrogatively,

"Vandeman shot her?" and when I nodded. "He's on his way to jail. I'm
out. But I'm the man that's responsible for what's happened to her.
Dragged her into this thing, in the first place. She hated those
concentrating stunts; and I set her to do one at that woman's table. To
help play my game--I risked her life."

I listened in wonder; sidelong, in the dimness, I studied the carriage
of head and shoulders: no diminution of power; but a new use of it. This
was not the crude boy who would knock everybody's plans to bits for a
whim; Worth had found himself; and what a man!

"How does it look for recovering the money, Boyne?" Edwards questioned
as we drove along.

I plunged into the hottest of that stuff Clayte-Vandeman had spilled,
talked fascinatingly, as I thought, for three minutes, and paused to
hear Worth say,

"Who's with Barbara at my house?"

"Mrs. Bowman," I said in despair, and quit right there.

We came into Broad Street a little above the Vandeman bungalow which lay
black and silent, the lights of Worth's house showing beyond. As we
turned the corner, a man jumped up from the shadow of the hedge where
the Vandeman lawn joined the Gilbert place; there was a flash; the
report of a gun; our watchers had flushed some one. I'd barely had time
to say so to