Bank defaulter? By Jove! you've found him at last, have
you?"

The detective nodded. "It takes a good while, sometimes, but I don't
fall down very often when there's enough money in it to make the game
worth the candle. I've been two years, off and on, trying to locate
Mortsen: and now that I've found him, he is where he can't be
extradited. All the same, I'll bet you five to one he goes back with me
in the next steamer--what? Have a new smoke. No? Then let's go and turn
in; it's getting late in the night."

III

THE RIGHT OF MIGHT

Two days after the supper at Chaudiere's and the clearing of the fruit
steamer _Adelantado_ for the banana coast, or, more specifically, in the
forenoon of the second day, the unimpetuous routine of the business
quarter of New Orleans was rudely disturbed by the shock of a genuine
sensation.

To shatter at a single blow the most venerable of the routine
precedents, the sensational thing chose for its colliding point with
orderly system one of the oldest and most conservative of the city's
banks: the Bayou State Security. At ten o'clock, following the precise
habit of half a lifetime, Mr. Andrew Galbraith, president of the Bayou
State, entered his private room in the rear of the main banking
apartment, opened his desk, and addressed himself to the business of the
day. Punctually at ten-five, the stenographer, whose desk was in the
anteroom, brought in the mail; five minutes later the cashier entered
for his morning conference with his superior; and at half-past the hour
the president was left alone to read his correspondence.

Being a man whose mental processes were all serious, and whose hobby was
method, Mr. Galbraith had established a custom of giving himself a
quiet half-hour of inviolable seclusion in which to read and consider
his mail. During this sacred interval the stenographer, standing guard
in the outer office, had instructions to deny his chief to callers of
any and every degree. Wherefore, when, at twenty minutes to eleven, the
door of the private office opened to admit a stranger, the president was
justly annoyed.

"Well, sir; what now?" he demanded, impatiently, taking the intruder's
measure in a swift glance shot from beneath his bushy white eyebrows.

The unannounced visitor was a young man of rather prepossessing
appearance, a trifle tall for his breadth of shoulder, fair, with blue
eyes and a curling reddish beard and mustache, the former trimmed to a
p