ize, I placed the drag-net out for
Silent Steve, tin-horn gambler.

They talked as they lunched. I didn't pay any attention to what they
said now; my mind was racing at the new idea Worth had given me. So far,
I had been running Skeels down as one of the same gang with Clayte; the
man on the roof; the go-between for the getaway. My supposition was that
when the suitcase was emptied for division, Skeels, being left to
dispose of the container, had stuck it where we found it. But what if
the thing worked another way? What if all the money--almost a round
million--which came to the Gold Nugget roof in the brown sole-leather
case, walked out of its front door in the new black shiny carrier of
Skeels the gambler?

Could that be worked? A gambler at night, a bank employee by day? Why
not? Improbable. But not impossible.

"I believe you said a mouthful, Worth," I broke in on the two at their
lunch. "And tell me, girl, how did you get the idea of walking up to the
desk at the Gold Nugget and demanding Steve Skeels from the Kite?"

"I didn't demand Steve Skeels," she reminded me rather plaintively. "I
didn't want--him."

"What did you want?"

"A room that had been lived in."

She didn't need to add a word to that. I got her in the instant. That
examination of hers in Clayte's room at the St. Dunstan; the crisp,
new-looking bedding, the unworn velvet of the chair cushions; the faded
nap of the carpet, quite perfect, while that in the hall had just been
renewed. Even had the room been done over recently--and I knew it had
not--there was no getting around the total absence of photographs,
pictures, books, magazines, newspapers, old letters, the lack of all
the half worn stuff that collects about an occupied apartment. No
pinholes or defacements on the walls, none of the litter that
accumulates. The girl was right; that room hadn't been lived in.

"Beautiful," I said in honest admiration. "It's a pleasure to see a mind
like yours, and such powers of observation, in action, clicking out
results like a perfectly adjusted machine. Clayte didn't live in his
room because he lived with the gang all his glorious outside hours.
There was where the poor rabbit of a bank clerk got his fling."

"Oh, yes, it works logically. He held himself down to Clayte at the St.
Dunstan and in the bank, and he let himself go to--what?--outside of it,
beyond it, where he really lived."

"He let himself go to Steve Skeels--won't that do you?"

"