e to me about them? Don't
pretend she did; I know better."

"I'm not goin' to pretend--that. She didn't."

"Humph!" with a sneer; "perhaps your authority comes from some one else.
Her daughter, maybe? You and she are--or shall we say _were_--quite
touchingly confidential at one time, I believe."

The tone and the remark were mistakes; it would have been much better
for the Phillips cause if the speaker had continued to be loftily
condescending. Sears kept a grip on his temper, but his own tone changed
as he replied.

"Egbert," he said sharply, "look here. The facts, as far as a man
without a spyglass can sight 'em through the fog, are just these: You
got George Kent into a stock trade. He put up money--real money. You put
up two thousand dollars in bonds and, because that was more than your
share, he paid you four hundred dollars in cash. The last anybody knew
the two bonds you put up were the property of Cordelia Berry. I want to
know how you got hold of 'em."

"Am I to understand that you are accusing me of _stealing_ those bonds?"

"I'm not accusin' you of anything in particular. George has put this
affair of his in my hands; I've got what amounts to his signed power of
attorney in my pocket. If those bonds are yours, and you can prove it,
then I shan't say any more about 'em. If they still belong to
Cordelia--well, that's another question, one I mean to have the answer
to before you and I part company."

"Kendrick, I---- Do you realize that I can have you arrested for this?"

"I don't know. But it does seem to me that if those bonds aren't your
property then you had no right to pledge 'em in that stock deal. And
that your takin' Kent's four hundred dollars in part payment for 'em
comes pretty nigh to what a lawyer would call gettin' money under false
pretenses. So the arrests might be even-Stephen, so far as that goes."

This was the sheerest "bluff," but it was delivered with all the
assurance in the world. It had not precisely the effect Sears had hoped
for. Egbert did not seem so much frightened as annoyed by it. He
frowned, walked across the room and back, looked at the clock, then out
of the window, and finally turned to his opponent.

"Recognizing, of course," he sneered, "the fact that all this is
absolutely none of your business, Kendrick; may I ask why you didn't
come to me in Bayport instead of here?"

The captain's smile returned. "I did try to come, Egbert," he answered.
"But you had gone an