ed pride could rise and stand erect, fuller
nourished.

These grandiose prospects of the altered future called for celebration,
very moderate, of course, because now above all other times he needed a
dependable and clear brain. With the tingling of the alcohol in his
arteries his dreams expanded--and he drank more.

Then he had been robbed.

"But how in God's name could it happen?" demanded the Colonel. "You were
stopping overnight at the Phoenix. Didn't you put your money in the
safe?"

Masters raised a pair of nerveless hands in a deprecatory gesture.

"I was drinking. I had certain memoranda in the same bag and I took it
up to my room to run over some details--then he came and knocked at the
door."

"Who came?"

"I don't know. He called me by name and seemed to be a man of means and
cultivation. We drank and chatted together. It was in my bedroom in a
city hotel, mind you. I didn't drink much.... The bag was locked ... the
key was on the table by my hand.... Of course in some fashion he had
learned of the money being turned over to me. How?"

The response was dry.

"I don't know. What happened?"

"God knows. I suppose it was some variation of the old device of
knock-out drops or some sort of drug. I awoke sitting in my chair--very
sick at my stomach--and had just time to make my train by rushing off
without breakfast. I had been there all night. I glanced in the bag and
seeing the packet there with the rubber bands around it right as rain, I
failed to suspect. It was when I got here that I found it had been
rifled."

"And the man?"

"I talked with the hotel by long distance. No one by the name he gave
me had been registered there. The description meant nothing to them."

"Why," inquired the Colonel presently, "didn't you tell me of this plan
of yours in advance--this enterprise?"

Masters shook his head. "You'd only have laughed at me like the rest. I
was getting fed up on being laughed at. It gets on a man's nerves in
time. For just once in my life I wanted to be the one who could say 'I
told you so!'"

"What steps have you taken--toward catching the thief?"

The victim groaned. "Don't you see that I couldn't take any? To report
to the police would be an admission to the company. The whole thing was
trusted to my hands after much reluctance. Can't you see that my story
would seem a bit thin?"

Masters' words ended with a gulp, and in his eyes was the stark terror
of panic reacting after the c