an anything
else. Your father has just acquired a big block of it. Act while there's
time. Better go out there and see him now--at once."

"I'll think about it," Worth nodded. "You dig for me what you can and
never quit." And he applied himself to the demands of the down-town
traffic.

"Well," Cummings said, "drop me at the next corner, please. I've got an
engagement with a man here."

Worth swung in and stopped. Cummings left us. As we began to worm a slow
way toward my office, I suggested,

"You'll come upstairs with me, and--er--sort of outline a policy? I
ought to have any possible information you can give me, so's not to make
any more wrong moves than we have to."

"Information?" he echoed, and I hastened to amend,

"I mean whatever notion you've got. Your theory, you know--"

"Not a notion. Not a theory." He shook his head, eyes on the traffic
cop. "That's your part."

I sat there somewhat flabbergasted. After all, I hadn't fully believed
that the boy had absolutely nothing to go on, that he had bought purely
at a whim, put up eight hundred thousand dollars on my skill at running
down a criminal. It sort of crumpled me up. I said so. He laughed a
little, ran up to the curb at the Phelan building, cut out the engine,
set the brake and turned to me with,

"Don't worry. I'm getting what I paid for--or what I'm going to pay for.
And I've got to go right after the money. Suppose I meet you, say, at
ten o'clock to-night?"

"Suits me."

"At Tait's. Reserve a table, will you, and we'll have supper."

"You're on," I said. "And plenty to do myself meantime." I hopped out on
my side.

Worth sat in the roadster, not hurrying himself to follow up Cummings'
suggestion--the big boy, non-communicative, incurious, the question of
fortune lost or won seeming not to trouble him at all. I skirted the
machine and came round to him, demanding,

"With whom do you suppose Cummings' engagement was?"

"Don't know, Jerry, and don't care," looking down at me serenely. "Why
should I?" He swung one long leg free and stopped idly, half in the car,
half out.

"What if I told you Cummings' engagement was with our friend
Dykeman--only Dykeman doesn't know it yet?"

Slowly he brought that dangling foot down to the pavement, followed it
with the other, and faced me. Across the blankness of his features shot
a joyous gleam; it spread, brightening till he was radiant.

"I get you!" he chortled. "Collusion! They think I'm standi