finally decided Ferris. "It's just a case of plain, ordinary thief!"

The ambitious scoundrel had decided to conceal the finding of Clayton's dispatches and carbon-book from all the local officials of the company.

"Now to the practical," he muttered, as he spread out his girl wife's fateful telegram.

"She will have surely received the Tacoma dispatches to the old man before I can reach her now. The Associated Press, to-morrow, will have a full account of the accident. His condition will be telegraphed all over the country. But I'll instantly send a carte blanche order to the Western Union man at Pasco for hourly reports."

The Gazetteer had furnished him the meager information that Pasco was a little railroad junction town in Franklin County, Washington, on the Columbia River. "The old man must have been delayed on his way to meet Clayton."

"Now, for Alice!" The schemer's brow was damp with a cold moisture as he muttered: "Old Hugh hated even to hear of Death. He tabooed the subject like a Chinese mandarin.

"His will! Did he think to change that document after the formal marriage? I have not yet delivered Senator Durham! Hugh may have left this girl the whole property! Fool! That I did not take that matter up! Who ever thinks of Death, the grim shadow, stealing along at our side? I must kill off her lingering regard for 'Brother Randall Clayton!' Shall I start?"

After half an hour's cogitation, Ferris had made up his plan of operations. "I must let him drop! I cannot reach him. I will then act on a certainty. She will report to me. I will clear all up here and start West to-morrow night. But I will await her report and a second order to join her. I must let her know why I linger."

There were a dozen attendants waiting outside, for the accountants, detectives and police were to be busied, coming and going, all the night. Ferris had already called Einstein, waiting now on his own special orders, when he changed his mind. "I'll trust no one now."

He decided to go to the telegraph office himself. He suddenly remembered the influence of the robbery and Worthington's untimely death upon the value of the Western Trading Company's stock.

"Damn it!" he growled. "I may be left a millionaire or a pauper!

I don't know which; and I have no ready money."

But the presence of Senator Durham at Newport gave him a gleam of light in these dark skies. "I'll telegraph to Durham (in cipher) to sell a big block of this stock short at the opening of the Board.

Hugh's death will carry it down twenty or thirty dollars a share, and then it will be back to the normal in a week."

Suddenly he remembered the waiting Einstein. "Tell me," hoarsely whispered Ferris as he dragged the lad back into the private office, "What do you think of all this? You knew Mr. Clayton's ways!"

"What's my opinion worth?" bluntly said the watchful Emil. "This!"

said Ferris, handing him a roll of bills. "Then," fearfully whispered the artful boy, "it ain't no case of skippin' out. I believe some of the fools in the office got a braggin' over their lunches about our heavy bank business, and some smart gang has 'done up' Mr.

Clayton. I don't think he's alive. He wasn't the man to 'give up'

easy. He was 'dead square.' There wasn't no woman in the case. I could tell stories of some of the other gentlemen. No! Clayton's been hit good an' hard!"

The boy trembled as he spoke. Ferris laughed contemptuously. "Here, in New York!"

The stubborn boy answered: "Look a-here! I'm only a poor working boy! There's twenty squares within a half mile where a man's life isn't safe if he flashes a ten-dollar bill. Clayton was followed, and done up for fair. An' the gang an' the swag are hundreds of miles away! That's how!"

"But where would they hide him?" answered Ferris, shivering at the boy's matter-of-fact coldness.

"RIVER!" emphatically said Emil. "Five to six hundred floaters picked up every year. Nobody knows; nobody cares!

"Now," sagely concluded Emil, "if Clayton could have been led off, then it's dead easy; but he started straight for the bank, and never got there. The gang may have piped him off for months, and they worked on him, right here in the heart of town."

"Keep your mouth shut. Post me, on the quiet," said Ferris, as he remembered his telegrams. When Emil Einstein was left alone, he calmly counted his bills.

"Pretty good throw-off," he murmured. "I must lie low, for the mother's sake. And--give her a wide berth. It's getting pretty warm. This fellow's a chump; but the detectives, there's another breed of rats!" The boy shivered as he thought of the gleaming handcuffs.

Arthur Ferris had now recovered from the first shock of the tidings from the West enough to look ahead for the piloting of his own interests. He smiled grimly. "Business before pleasure!" as he sent off at the Twenty-third Street general office the tidings which enabled Senator Durham to turn a cool hundred thousand. "He'll be down here to-morrow to watch over his stocks! I must wait and see him before I go West. Besides, I must see Witherspoon and give him his cue. He knows nothing! He searched the Detroit title and never even made a kick. His firm passed on the whole matter. I need him to carry out my future plans."

It seemed to Ferris that his long dispatch to "Miss Alice Worthington"

betrayed too much connubial tenderness. He recast it, and, after stating that he would leave for Pasco within twenty-four hours, added:

"Open and read all dispatches sent on to your father from Tacoma.

The company's affairs are paralyzed here. I am in sole control.

Randall Clayton has absconded with a quarter of a million. Missing since Saturday. Police at work. Telegraph your hotel address.

I will report by wire to-morrow several times. Will be guided by your telegrams. Am acting under your father's letter of instructions.

Secure all his private papers in case of grave results of injury."

All the weary night Arthur Ferris tossed uneasily upon his bed, tormented with returning fears as to Hugh Worthington's testamentary dispositions. "Those old miser hunks are crafty! The girl will be wax in my hands if I am left to control the money. If she has the purse-strings I may find her ugly in harness. She has the old man's blood in her, and blood will tell."

He had not dared to reveal the secret marriage in the decorous language of his carefully worded dispatch. But one comfort was left him. "I have the whip hand of them all," he murmured. "I am in charge, and no one can displace me. Jack Witherspoon knows nothing, and I can easily placate him by making him one of the estate's lawyers."

The golden crown of the millionaire seemed to have descended upon his brows at last.

Yet, while he slept, the enemy was awake and sowed tares! At the Hoffman House Doctor Atwater and Witherspoon sat in conference long after the midnight chimes had sounded. When the young men separated, Atwater heartily grasped his friend's hand. "Poor Randall," he sighed. "Fool, perhaps, even as you or I; but thief and defaulter, no; never. There is some sad solution to this mystery. You must wait till Worthington arrives, and be the champion of our missing friend. I only fear later a discovery of his murder, and, if so, thank God! it will be a cypress wreath; not the stain of dishonor, or the brand of the felon. I am yours, to the last."

As Witherspoon said "Good night" to the little picture of Francine Delacroix, which was his household goddess, he swore an oath of fidelity. "It may leave me poor, separate us for years; but Clayton, dead or alive, shall be found. The Detroit package may unravel a part of this mystery."

It was high noon the next day when Arthur Ferris had completed his arrangements for the hasty trip West. Jack Witherspoon sat in Ferris' private office, stunned with the news of Hugh Worthington's death at Pasco.

For the operator there had loyally sent on to Ferris the first news of the millionaire's demise in laconic words, "Died at ten o'clock, fully conscious. Daughter with him since four A.M. Full Associated Press reports later."

The morning journals only contained a rumor that "Mr. Hugh Worthington's private car was attached to the telescoped train."

"This leaves me in charge of all until Hugh's will is opened,"

evasively said Ferris. "But it is my duty to go out there. You must remain here, as my representative, until I return. I will telegraph your firm at Detroit that I need you here. They can charge a company fee. Your own honorarium will be paid 'out of the estate.' Now join me here at four. I'll have your orders ready.

And you can go to the station with me. I'll wire you, twice a day, and you can report to me, on the train."

"Any clue?" sadly demanded Witherspoon. "Oh! Clayton has got clean away with his swag," said Ferris. "I've published fifteen thousand dollars' reward for him, and ten more for the cheques or any considerable part of the stolen money."

They parted in silence, and Ferris never saw the glare in Jack Witherspoon's eyes. "If he proves innocent, my poor friend, I'll make Ferris, on his knees, eat those cruel words!"

But when he left his new client, so strangely brought into his half confidence, the Detroit lawyer hastened to Adams' Express office.

For two hours he sat alone in a private room and studied over the contents of the mute message of the dead.

There were things in the package which astounded him; there were written words which melted him to tears. The little hoard of twenty-eight thousand dollars in certified cheques was there, with an order for Randall Clayton's active stocks. A duly executed will, in favor of my school-fellow and friend, Jack Witherspoon, lawyer, of Detroit, was accompanied with a letter which gave the history of the abortive attempt to decoy him to Cheyenne.

The last manly lines brought tears to Jack Witherspoon's eyes. "As they cannot lure me to Cheyenne, they may strike at me, even here, and so, before your return. I've left you the little I have. Should aught befall me, you are my sole heir, and the old matter would go to you. Punish Hugh, follow up and defeat Ferris, and win my birthright for Francine Delacroix. Make her your happy wife. We made a mistake, Jack. We should have gone West together at once, and faced old Hugh."

The young lawyer's eyes were filled with tears as he read the rest of Clayton's statement, evidently prepared to offset any attempt on his life.

But he was ready to battle within the enemy's lines, with a calm and unmoved face, when he met Arthur Ferris at four o'clock.

Witherspoon scarcely recognized the man whom he instinctively felt to be Randall Clayton's murderer. There were great furrows in Ferris' pale cheeks as he handed him a telegram. "I believe that the whole world is going mad," desperately said the baffled Ferris.

"Just read those lines from a now helpless and orphaned girl."

The men who were to fight out a battle to the death eyed each other in silence. Witherspoon scarcely could credit his eyes, as he read again and again the few words of the imperative message.

"My father died this morning. Do not join me. Send no telegrams or letters. I am coming, at once, to New York. Remain in charge until I come with my lawyers from Detroit. I will have my father's will and all his papers. I act under his last wishes. Find Randall Clayton, dead or alive.