Billy spoke languidly.
The others were searching assiduously for "clues" in the most approved
manner, but Billy sprawled easily in a chair.

"We'll get 'em if we can find out who they were," snapped Lake, setting
his strong jaw. He did not particularly like Billy--especially since
their late trip to Rainbow. "There never was a man yet so good but
there was one just a little better."

"By a good man, in this connection, you mean a bad man, I presume?" said
Billy in a meditative drawl. "Were you a good man before you became a
banker?"

"Look here! What's this?" The interruption came from Clarke. He pounced
down between two fragments of the safe door and brought up an object
which he held to the light.

At the startled tones, Lake spun round in his swivel-chair. He held out
his hand.

"Really, I don't think I ever saw anything like this thing before," he
said. "Any of you know what it is?"

"It's a noseguard," said Billy. Billy was a college man and had worn a
nosepiece himself. He frowned unconsciously, remembering his successful
rival of the masquerade.

"A noseguard? What for?"

"You wear it to protect your nose and teeth when playing football,"
explained Billy. "Keeps you from swearing, too. You hold this piece
between your teeth; the other part goes over your nose, up between your
eyes and fastens with this band around your forehead."

"Why! Why!" gasped Clarke, "there was a man at the masquerade togged out
as a football player!"

"I saw him," said Alec. "And he wore one of these things. I saw him
talking to Topsy."

"One of my guests?" demanded Lake scoffingly. "Oh, nonsense! Some young
fellow has been in here yesterday, talking to the clerks, and dropped
it. Who went as a football player, White? You know all these college
boys. Know anything about this one?"

"Not a thing." There Billy lied--a prompt and loyal gentleman--reasoning
that Buttinski, as he mentally styled the interloper who had
misappropriated the Quaker lady, would have cared nothing at that time
for a paltry thirty thousand. Thus was he guilty of a practice against
which we are all vainly warned--of judging others by ourselves. Billy
remembered very distinctly that Miss Ellinor had not reappeared until
the midnight unmasking, and he therefore acquitted her companion of this
particular crime, entirely without prejudice to Buttinski's felonious
instincts in general. For the watchman had been shot before midnight.
Billy made a tentative