why you
are so intimate with your uncle's negro valet----"

"You make me sick!" exclaimed Mason, wearily. "Sim told me all about
your looney suspicions about he and I making away with my uncle. But I
defy you to prove any of your crack-brained theories. You are on the
wrong trail, Brady. And I advise you to leave me alone, or by jingo,
I'll defend myself and make it very warm for you."

"Got a big political pull?" laughed the old detective.

"No, but I carry a gun in my pocket!" hissed Mason, furiously.

"Oh, pshaw! That don't scare me a bit, my boy. Then you won't
confess----"

"I'll tell you nothing of my personal affairs!" roared Mason. "Clear
out! Mind your own business. Leave me alone! I don't want to have
anything to do with you fellows! Do you understand?"

And he scowled and stamped his foot on the pavement and rushed past
them and hastily entered his house.

The Bradys laughed and walked away.

"He's getting afraid of us," said Harry.

"Yes. We are wearing on his nerves. He knows we are watching him, and
it makes him very uneasy. However, when we get good proof of his guilt,
we'll nail him, and that will end his rascality."

They felt confident that Mason would not come out again that night and
therefore went home.

On the following morning a great surprise awaited them.

Harry was reading the daily paper and caught view of this item:

"The missing man found. Oliver Dalton, the well-known Broad street
broker, found drowned in the East river. At ten o'clock last night
Martin Kelly, an old junk dealer, picked up the mutilated corpse of
a well-dressed man in the East river off the foot of East
Forty-second street. He towed it behind his skiff to the morgue,
and turned the corpse over to the authorities, with an account of
his ghastly find. The body had been in the water so long it would
have been unrecognizable if it were not for some private papers
found in the pockets, by means of which the man's identity was
established. A reporter was the first one to bring the news to the
dead man's daughter, etc."

When Harry read the item aloud, Old King Brady cried:

"Harry, had Mason's trip on the river anything to do with finding that
corpse?"

"Let us go down to the morgue and get the facts."

Old King Brady nodded and they hastened across town.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT THE BROKER'S WILL SAID.

When the Bradys entered the morgue they found Lizzie