ur checks. You're known so much better than I,
and it's Sunday night--"

"And it's a fine way to keep holy the Sabbath day," Matt Peasley
retorted and hung up.

"Well," Herman Joost queried, "do we stay here all night?"

Bill Peck bowed his head. "Look here," he demanded suddenly, "do you
know a good diamond when you see it?"

"I do," Herman Joost replied.

"Will you wait here until I go to my hotel and get one?"

"Sure."

Bill Peck limped painfully away. Forty minutes later he returned with a
platinum ring set with diamonds and sapphires.

"What are they worth?" he demanded.

Herman Joost looked the ring over lovingly and appraised it
conservatively at twenty-five hundred dollars.

"Take it as security for the payment of my check," Peck pleaded. "Give
me a receipt for it and after my check has gone through clearing I'll
come back and get the ring."

Fifteen minutes later, with the blue vase packed in excelsior and
reposing in a stout cardboard box, Bill Peck entered a restaurant and
ordered dinner. When he had dined he engaged a taxi and was driven to
the flying field at the Marina. From the night watchman he ascertained
the address of his pilot friend and at midnight, with his friend at the
wheel, Bill Peck and his blue vase soared up into the moonlight and
headed south.

An hour and a half later they landed in a stubble field in the Salinas
Valley and, bidding his friend good-bye, Bill Peck trudged across to the
railroad track and sat down. When the train bearing Cappy Ricks came
roaring down the valley, Peck twisted a Sunday paper with which he had
provided himself, into an improvised torch, which he lighted. Standing
between the rails he swung the flaming paper frantically.

The train slid to a halt, a brakeman opened a vestibule door, and Bill
Peck stepped wearily aboard.

"What do you mean by flagging this train?" the brakeman demanded
angrily, as he signaled the engineer to proceed. "Got a ticket?"

"No, but I've got the money to pay my way. And I flagged this train
because I wanted to change my method of travel. I'm looking for a man in
stateroom A of car 7, and if you try to block me there'll be murder
done."

"That's right. Take advantage of your half-portion arm and abuse me,"
the brakeman retorted bitterly. "Are you looking for that little old man
with the Henry Clay collar and the white mutton-chop whiskers?"

"I certainly am."

"Well, he was looking for you just before we left San