he head of the Boyne
agency at that moment. I had a fellow feeling for that Mazeppa party who
was tied in his birthday suit to the back of a wild horse. Locoed
broncos were more amenable to rein than Worth Gilbert. So that was why
he wanted that suitcase--"had a use for it," he'd put it; insisted on an
order to be able to get it if I wasn't at my office; wanted it to shove
back at these scary bank officials, with his own money for the payment
inside. No wonder Whipple called him an "outlaw"!

"Get the idea, do you, Boyne?" Anson lunged at me in his ponderous way.
"The rest of us thought 'twas a poor joke, but Knapp and Whipple had
both seen that suitcase before--and recognized it."

"Yes," said Knapp quietly. "It chanced I saw it go through the door that
last day, when it had nearly a million of our money in it. And here it
was--" his voice broke off.

"Certainly startling," Cummings spoke directly at me, "for them to see
it come back in Worth Gilbert's hands, with the same kind of filling,
less one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. Of course, I didn't
know the identity of the suitcase until they'd given Gilbert his receipt
and he was gone."

"Oh, they accepted his money?" I said, and every man in the room looked
sheepish, except Cummings who didn't need to, and Dykeman who was too
mad to. He shouted at me,

"Yes, we took it; and you're going to tell us where he got that
suitcase."

"What have your own detectives--those you hired on the side--to say
about it?" I countered on him, and saw instantly that the Whipple end of
the crowd hadn't known of Dykeman's spotters and trailers.

"Well, why not?" Dykeman shrilled. "Why not? Who wouldn't shadow that
crook? One hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars! Worked us like
suckers--come-ons--!" he choked up and began to cough. Cummings came in
where he left off.

"See here, Boyne; we don't want to antagonize you. You've said from the
first that this crime was a conspiracy--a big thing--directed by brains
on the outside. Clayte was the tool. Whose tool was he? That's what we
want to know." And Anson trundled along,

"These men who have been in the war get a contempt for law, there's no
doubt about it. Captain Gilbert might--"

"No names!" Whipple's hand went up in protest. "No accusations,
gentlemen, please; Mr. Boyne--this is a dreadful thing. But, really,
Captain Gilbert's manner was very strange. I might say he--"

"Swaggered," supplied Cummings coolly