hand."

"Sure," I nodded amiably, "You had me fooled."

"And without a bit of crude make-up or disguise," he rubbed it in. "It
was a change of manner and psychology for mine. As Edward Clayte--and
that's not my name, either, any more than Vandeman--I was
description-proof. I meant to be--and I was. It took--her--the girl,"
his face darkened and he jerked at his cigar, "to deduce that a
nonentity who could get away with nearly a million dollars and leave no
trail was some man!"

I raised my head with a start and stared at the man in his raincoat and
lilac silk pantaloons.

"That's so," I fed it to him, "She had a name for you. She called you
the wonder man."

"Did she!" a pleased smile. "Well, I'll give her right on that. I was
some little wonder man. Listen," his insistent over-stimulated voice
went eagerly on, "The beauty of my scheme was that up to the very last
move, there was nothing criminal in my leading this double life. You
see--as I got stronger and stronger here in Santa Ysobel, I bought a
good machine, a speedster that could burn up the road. Many's the stag
supper I've had with the boys there in my bungalow, and been back behind
the wicket as Edward Clayte in the Van Ness Avenue bank on time next
morning. I was in that room at the St. Dunstan about as much as a
fellow's in his front hall. I walked through it to Henry J. Brundage's
room at the Nugget; I stayed there more often than I did at the St.
Dunstan, unless I came on here.

"I'd left marriage out. Then that night four years ago when Ina had her
little run-in with old Tom Gilbert and got her engagement to Worth
smashed, I saw there might be girls right in the class I was trying to
break into that would be possible for a man like me. The date for our
wedding was set, when Thomas Gilbert remarked to me one afternoon as we
were coming off the golf links together, that he was buying a block of
Van Ness Savings Bank stock. For a minute I felt like caving in his
head, then and there, with the golf club I carried. What a hell of a
thing to happen, right at the last this way! Ten chances to one I'd have
this man to silence; but it must be done right. Not much room for murder
in so full a career as mine--holding down a teller's job, running for
the vice presidency of the country club, getting married in style--but
every time I'd look up from behind my teller's grille, and see any one
near the size of old Gilbert walk in the front door, it gave me the
shi