difficulties along with Mrs. Barker's speculations, but
I never thought him up to this. And," he added, with sudden desperation,
"YOU trusted him, too."

In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and was
bearing him down on the table. "Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besotted
fool?" he said hoarsely. "Speak. WHEN and WHERE did I trust him?"

"You said in your note--I was--to--help him," gasped Hall.

"My note," repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.

"Yes," said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket. "I brought
it with me. It isn't much of a note, but there's your signature plain
enough."

He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-cornered
shape. Steptoe opened it. He instantly recognized the paper on which
he had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel.
But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters,
were the words, "Help Van Loo all you can."

The blood rushed into his face. But he quickly collected himself, and
said hurriedly, "All right, I had forgotten it. Let the d----d sneak go.
We've got what's a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall's,
and it's well that he isn't in it to scoop the lion's share. Only we
must not waste time getting there now. You go there first, and at once,
and set those rascals to work. I'll follow you before Marshall comes up.
Get; I'll settle up here."

His face darkened once more as Hall hurried away, leaving him alone. He
drew out the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it again. Yes;
it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold of
it? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall or
passage when the servant dropped it? When Hall handed him the paper and
he first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of more
fiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude common
sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity with
Van Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, and
had sought to draw from him some knowledge of his early intercourse with
the child, and confessed everything, and even produced the paper with
his signature as a proof of identity? Women had been known to do such
desperate things. Perhaps she disbelieved her son's aversion to her, and
was trying to sound Van Loo. As for the forged words by Van Loo, and the
use he had put them to, he cared lit