ssession of Jimmy
Brunell. They belong to him, and my conscience is responsible
for their return. I don't know where to find him. I do know
that at one time he did some banking at the Brooklyn & Queens
Institution. If he does not do so now, kindly hold these
securities for Jimmy Brunell until called for, and in the
meantime see Walter Pennold of Brooklyn.

With the package and letter came a request from Henry Blaine which
those in power at the Brooklyn & Queens Bank were only too glad to
accede to, in order to ingratiate themselves with the great
investigator.

In accordance with this request, therefore, the affair was made known
by the bank-officials to the clerks as a matter of long standing
which had only just been rediscovered in an old vault, and the
subordinates discussed it among themselves with the gusto of those
whose lives were bounded by gilt cages, and circumscribed by rules of
silence. It was not unusual, therefore, that the new clerk, Alfred
Hicks, should have heard of it, but it was unusual that he should find
it expedient to make a detour on his way to work the next morning
which would take him to the gate of Walter Pennold's modest home.
Perhaps the fact that Alfred Hicks' real name was Guy Morrow and that
a letter received early that morning from Henry Blaine's office,
giving Pennold's address and a single line of instruction may have had
much to do with his matutinal visit.

Be that as it may, Morrow, the dapper young bank-clerk, found in the
Pennold household a grizzled, middle-aged man, with shifty,
suspicious eyes and a moist hand-clasp; behind him appeared a
shrewish, thin-haired wife who eyed the intruder from the first
with ill-concealed animosity.

He smiled--that frank, winning smile which had helped to land more men
behind the bars than the astuteness of many of his seniors--and said:
"I'm a clerk in the Brooklyn & Queens Bank, Mr. Pennold, and we have a
box of securities there evidently belonging to one Jimmy Brunell. No
one knows anything about it and no note came with it except a line
which read: 'Hold for Jim Brunell. See Walter Pennold of Brooklyn.'
Now you're the only Walter Pennold who banks with the B. & Q. and I
thought you might like to know about it. There are over two hundred
thousand dollars in securities and they have evidently been left there
by somebody as conscience-money. You can go to the bank and see the
people about it, of course. In fact, I