an that looked pretty much like
him, an' asked me to swear one of the guys into ten years in Sing Sing,
pr'aps I'd weaken. Mistaken identity is like grabbin' up two kings an' a
jack, an' playin' 'em fer threes."

"Which means, if I understand it, that you're guessing at the man--that
I've given you all this trouble for nothing."

Crane wished that Farrell had kept his doubts to himself; the case had
been made strong by his first decision, and now the devil of uncertainty
would destroy the value of identification.

"Not by a jugful!" ejaculated Farrell. "I'm just tellin' you this to
show you that we've got to make it complete--we've got to get collateral
to back up my pickin'."

"You mean some one else to identify him also?"

"No, not just that; but that's not a bad thought. My clerk, Ned Hagen,
must have noticed him too. I mean that the bettor's badge number will be
in line with that bet, an' you can probably find out the number of the
badge this rooster wore."

An inspiration came with Farrell's words--came to Crane. Why had he
not thought of that before? Still it didn't matter. The badge number,
Mortimer's number, would be in Faust's book where had been entered the
hundred dollars Mortimer put on Lauzanne. He could compare this with the
number in Farrell's book; no doubt they would agree; then, indeed,
the chain would be completed to the last link. No man on earth could
question that evidence.

"It's a good idea, Farrell," he said.

"Bet yer life, it's clear Pinkerton. You'd better come round to my place
to-morrow about ten, an' we'll look it up."

"I will," Crane answered.

XLIII.

The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after
her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for
driving horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch
beyond his complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the
terrible new evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her
lover.

"I didn't need this," the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of
grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. "Oh, God!" she
pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content,
"strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George--you
couldn't--you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't you
have courage and clear your friend?"

Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane,