only got the whole night ahead of us--but we'll need it all.
We're going to run the queer off that cracked plate."

One of the others, Marty Dean this time, a certain brutal aggressiveness
in both features and physique, edged forward.

"Say, what's the lay?" he demanded. "A joke? We printed one fiver off
that plate--and then we knew enough to quit. With that crack along
the corner, you couldn't pass 'em on a blind man! And Gregor saying he
thought we could patch the plate up enough to get by with gives me a
pain--he's got jingles in his dome factory! Run them fivers eh--say, are
you cracked, too?"

"Aw, forget it!" observed Malone caustically. "Who's running this gang?"
Then, with a malicious grin: "I got a customer for those fivers--fifteen
thousand dollars for all we can turn out to-night. See?"

The others stared at him for a moment, incredulity and greed mingling in
a curious half-hesitant, half-expectant look on their faces.

Then Whitie Burns spoke, circling his lips with the tip of his tongue:

"D'ye mean it, Cap--honest? What's the lay? How'd you work it?"

Malone, unbending with the sensation he had created, grinned again.

"Easy enough," he said offhandedly. "It was like falling off a log.
Gregor said, didn't he, that the only way he had been able to get
his claws on that plate was on account of young Matthews going away
sick--eh? Well, the old Matthews woman, his mother, has got money--about
fifteen thousand. I guess she ain't got any more than that, or I'd have
raised the ante. Aw, it was easy. She threw it at me. I framed one up on
them, that's all. I'm Kline, of the secret service--see? I don't suppose
they'd ever seen him, though they'd know his name fast enough, but I
made up something like him. I showed them where I had a case against
Sammy for pinching the plate that was strong enough to put a hundred
innocent men behind the bars. Of course, he knew well enough he was
innocent, but he could see the twenty years I showed him with both eyes.
Say, he mussed all over the place, and went and fainted like a girl. And
then the old woman came across with an offer of fifteen thousand for the
plate, and corrupted me." Malone's cunning, vicious face, now that
the softening effects of the gray hair and mustache were gone, seemed
accentuated diabolically by the grin broadening into a laugh, as he
guffawed.

Marty Dean's hand swung with a bang to Malone's shoulder.

"Say, Cap--say, you're all right!" he ex