red to stick to what he said, Evan gave in.

"I'll compromise with you," he said. "I promise to carry out
instructions exactly as given in the letter until after the securities
are handed over. After that I must be free to act as I see fit."

"What do you mean to do?" asked Deaves anxiously.

"I don't know. How can I tell? I'm hoping that something may happen
to give me a clue that I may follow up later."

"Oh well, that's all right," said Deaves. "You'll be at my house
before eight then?"

"I'll be there."

CHAPTER XX

THE BEGINNING OF THE NIGHT

George Deaves and Evan sat in the Deaves limousine with the package of
bonds between them. Deaves was perspiring and fidgetty, Evan the
picture of imperturbability--not but what Evan was excited too, but the
display of agitation the other was making put Evan on his mettle to
show nothing. The car was lying against the curb on the North side of
the Queensboro Bridge Plaza, and they were watching the hands of a
clock in a bank building creep to half-past eight.

"Why do you suppose they insisted on our waiting here?" said Deaves
querulously.

"Can't say," answered Evan. "I have fancied that some of their orders
were just thrown in to mystify us, to undermine our morale. Possibly
they stipulated we must leave this point at eight-thirty so they would
know exactly when to expect us."

"That man who just passed us, how he stared! Do you suppose he could
have been one of them?"

"There must be a lot of them then. Everybody stares. Like ourselves,
they wonder what we're waiting here for."

On the stroke of the half hour they gave the chauffeur word to proceed
out Stonewall avenue. The village of Regina is not a beautiful hamlet.
Its founders had large ideas; they laid off the principal street a
hundred feet wide, but the city has its own ideas about the proper
width of streets, and when in the course of time the municipality took
over Regina it paved but two-thirds of Stonewall avenue, leaving a
muddy morass at each side. The buildings that lined this thoroughfare
were something between those of a city slum and those of a Western boom
town. They had no difficulty in picking out Beechurst street; the big
stone church in its muddy yard was a horror.

They alighted in the middle of the street, for the chauffeur opined
that if he fell off the hard pavement he'd never be able to climb back
on it. They dismissed him, and watched him turn and roll out