Dr. Bird sprang to his feet.

"Mr. Mitchell," he said energetically, "you have shown excellent
judgment. Wire Captain Starley that you have seen me and that he is to
hold his crew on board and to talk to no one until I get there. Carnes,
telephone the Chief of Naval Operations and ask him to receive me in
conference at once. Have him get the Secretary of the Navy in, too, if
he is available. When you have finished that, telephone Bolton that you
will be away from Washington indefinitely."

"I'll telephone Admiral Buck for you, Doctor, but I don't dare telephone
any such message to Bolton; he'd take my head off. He has been running
the whole service ragged lately, and this is my first afternoon off duty
in a fortnight."

"What's the trouble, a flood of new counterfeits?"

"No, the counterfeit division is getting along all right. In point of
fact, they have lent us a dozen men. The trouble is a sudden big
increase in Communist activity throughout the country, with the Young
Labor party behind it. Bolton has been pretty jumpy since that Stokowski
affair last August and he is afraid of another attempt of some sort on
the President."

"The Young Labor party? I thought that gang was bankrupt and out of
business, since the Coast Guard broke up their alien smuggling scheme."

"They were down and out for a while, but they are in funds again--and
how! They must have three or four millions at least."

"Where did they get it?"

"That's what we have been trying to find out. The leaders have presented
bars of gold to a dozen banks throughout the country and demanded
specie. The banks shipped the gold to the mint and it was good gold,
nine hundred and twenty-five fine. What we are trying to find out is how
that gold got into the United States."

"A shipment of that size should be easy to trace."

"It would seem so, but it hasn't been. We have accounted for every pound
of every shipment that has come in through a port of entry, and we have
checked almost that close on the output of every mine in the United
States. If the gold came from Russia, it would have had to cross Europe,
and we can't get any trace of it from abroad. It looks as though they
were _making_ it."

* * * * *

Dr. Bird rubbed his head thoughtfully.

"Possible, but hardly probable," he said. "How much did you say they
had?"

"Over three millions in thirty-pound bars. Each bar shows signs of
having a mint mark chiselled o