on that wall there so he could climb down here
without the rope. They have been taken away some time, and the places
where they were are weathered over so you would hardly notice them."

"Right you are," I said feelingly. "I'd hardly notice them. If I could
notice things as you do--fame and fortune for me!" I thought the matter
over for a minute. "That lodger on the top floor, Steve Skeels," I
debated. "A poor bet. Yet--after all, he might have been a member of the
gang, though somehow I don't get the hunch--"

"What sort of looking person was this man Skeels?" she asked.

"Quiet fellow. Dressed like a church deacon. 'Silent Steve' they call
him. I'll send for him down stairs and let you give him the once-over if
you like."

"Oh, that's not the kind of man I'm looking for." She shook her head.
"My man would be more like those down there in the easy chairs--so he
wasn't noticed in the elevator or when he passed out through the
office."

"Wasn't it cute of him?" I grinned. "But you see we've just heard that
he didn't take the elevator and go through the office--Saturday anyhow,
which is the only time that really counts for us, the time when he
carried that suitcase with a fortune in it."

"But he did," she persisted. "He went that way. He walked out the front
door and carried away the suitcase--"

"_He didn't!_" Worth shouted, and began throwing things behind him like
a terrier in a wood-rat's burrow.

Derelict stuff of all sorts; empty boxes, pasteboard cartons, part of an
old trunk, he hurtled them into a heap, and dragged out a square
something in a gunny sack. As he jerked to clear it from the sacking, I
glanced at little Miss Wallace. She wasn't getting any pleasureable kick
out of the situation. Her eyes seemed to go wider open with a sort of
horror, her face paled as she drooped in on herself, sitting there on
the box. Then Worth held up his find in triumph, assuming a famous
attitude.

"The world is mine!" he cried.

"Maybe 'tis, maybe 'tisn't," I said as I ran across to look at the thing
close. Sure enough, he'd dug up a respectable brown, sole leather
suitcase with brass trimmings such as a bank clerk might have carried,
suspiciously much too good to have been thrown out here. Could it be
that the thieves had indeed met in one of the Gold Nugget's rooms or in
the roof-house up here, made their divvy, split the swag, and thus
clumsily disposed of the container? At the moment, Worth tore buckles
and l