at
stones in the mill came to us insistently. I stood there, they all
watching me, and spoke into the transmitter.

"This is Boyne."

"Hold the receiver close to your ear so it won't leak words." The
warning wasn't needed; I thought I knew the voice. "Press the
transmitter close to your chest. Listen--don't talk; don't say a word in
reply to me. I'm in the telephone booth outside. I must see you just as
soon as I can. I'll be at the Little Italy restaurant--you know, don't
you? on Fisherman's Wharf--in ten minutes. If you can come, and alone,
find me there. I'll wait an hour. If you can't come now, you _must_ see
me this evening after working hours."

"I'll come now," I raised the transmitter to say, and quickly over the
wire came the answer,

"I told you not to speak--in there! This is Barbara Wallace."

CHAPTER XVI

A LUNCHEON

I went away from there.

Looking about me, I had guessed that pretty much every man in the room
believed that it was Worth Gilbert with whom I had been talking over the
phone. Dykeman's trailers would be right behind me. Yet to the last,
Whipple and his crowd were offering me the return trip end of my ticket
with them; if I would come back and be good, even now, all would be
forgiven. I sized up the situation briefly and took my plunge, shutting
the door after me, glancing across the long room to see that Barbara
Wallace's desk was deserted. Nobody followed me from the room I had just
left. I walked quickly to the outer door.

Little Pete switched on his engine as I leaped into the car. My "Let her
go!" wasn't needed to make him throw in his clutch, and give me a flying
start straight ahead down the broad plank way of the Embarcadero.
Looking back as we hit the belt-line tracks, I saw a small car with two
men in it, shoot out from one of the wide doorways of the plant; but as
we rounded the cliff-like side of Telegraph Hill, my view of them was
cut off. Things had come for me thick and fast. I felt pretty well
balled up. But the girl had used secrecy in appointing this interview;
till I could see further into the thing, it was anyhow a safe bet to
drop them.

"Pete," I said, "lose that car behind us. Only ten minutes to slip them
and land me at Fisherman's Wharf. Show me what-for."

He grinned. Between Montgomery and the bay, north of California Street,
there are many narrow byways, crowded with the heavy traffic of
hucksters and vegetable men, a section devoted to the co