claimed excitedly. "You're
the boy! But what's the good of running anything off the plate before
turning it over to 'em--the stuff's no good to us."

"You got a wooden nut, with sawdust for brains," said Malone
sarcastically. "If he'd thought the gang of counterfeiters that was
supposed to have bought the plate from him had run off only one fiver
and then stopped because they say it wouldn't get by, and weren't going
to run any more, and just destroy the plate like it was supposed to have
been destroyed to begin with, and it all end up with no one the wiser,
where d'ye think we'd have banked that fifteen thousand! I told him I
had the whole run confiscated, and that the queer went with the plate,
so we'll just make that little run to-night--that's why I sent word
around to you this morning."

"By the jumping!" ejaculated Whitie Burns, heavy with admiration. "You
got a head on you, Cap!"

"It's a good thing for some of you that I have," returned Malone
complacently. "But don't stand jawing all night. Go on, now--get busy!"

There was no surprise in Jimmie Dale's face--he had chosen his position
behind a pile of cases that he had been extremely careful, as a man
is careful when his life hangs in the balance, to assure himself were
empty. None of the four came near or touched the pile behind which he
stood; but, here and there about the room, they pulled this one and that
one out from various stacks. In scarcely more than a moment, the room
was completely transformed. It was no longer a storeroom for surplus
stock, for the storage of bulky and empty packing cases! From the cases
the men had picked out, like a touch of magic, appeared a veritable
printing plant, an elaborate engraver's outfit--a highly efficient
foot-power press, rapidly being assembled by Whitie Burns; an electric
dryer, inks, a pile of white, silk-threaded bank-note paper, a cutter,
and a score of other appurtenances.

"Yes," said Jimmie Dale very gently to himself. "Yes, quite so--but the
plate? Ah!" Malone was taking it out from the middle of a bundle of old
newspapers, loosely tied together, that he had lifted from one of the
cases.

Jimmie Dale's eyes fastened on it--and from that instant never left it.
A minute passed, two, three of them--the four men were silently busy
about the room--Malone was carefully cleaning the plate.

"They will raid to-night. Look out for Kline, he is the sharpest man in
the United State secret service"--the warning