were in the course of a desperate attempt to get into the
chimney-room.

Louise and her mother had, from the first, been the great
stumbling-blocks. The plan had been to send Louise away until it was
too late for her to interfere, but she came back to the hotel at C--
just at the wrong time. There was a terrible scene. The girl was told
that something of the kind was necessary, that the bank was about to
close and her stepfather would either avoid arrest and disgrace in this
way, or kill himself. Fanny Armstrong was a weakling, but Louise was
more difficult to manage. She had no love for her stepfather, but her
devotion to her mother was entire, self-sacrificing. Forced into
acquiescence by her mother's appeals, overwhelmed by the situation, the
girl consented and fled.

From somewhere in Colorado she sent an anonymous telegram to Jack
Bailey at the Traders' Bank. Trapped as she was, she did not want to
see an innocent man arrested. The telegram, received on Thursday, had
sent the cashier to the bank that night in a frenzy.

Louise arrived at Sunnyside and found the house rented. Not knowing
what to do, she sent for Arnold at the Greenwood Club, and told him a
little, not all. She told him that there was something wrong, and that
the bank was about to close. That his father was responsible. Of the
conspiracy she said nothing. To her surprise, Arnold already knew,
through Bailey that night, that things were not right. Moreover, he
suspected what Louise did not, that the money was hidden at Sunnyside.
He had a scrap of paper that indicated a concealed room somewhere.

His inherited cupidity was aroused. Eager to get Halsey and Jack
Bailey out of the house, he went up to the east entry, and in the
billiard-room gave the cashier what he had refused earlier in the
evening--the address of Paul Armstrong in California and a telegram
which had been forwarded to the club for Bailey, from Doctor Walker.
It was in response to one Bailey had sent, and it said that Paul
Armstrong was very ill.

Bailey was almost desperate. He decided to go west and find Paul
Armstrong, and to force him to disgorge. But the catastrophe at the
bank occurred sooner than he had expected. On the moment of starting
west, at Andrews Station, where Mr. Jamieson had located the car, he
read that the bank had closed, and, going back, surrendered himself.

John Bailey had known Paul Armstrong intimately. He did not believe
that the m