onvincing shape on
that score. Meanwhile if you can see Vanderdyke and Mrs. Ralston you
can help me a great deal. I am sure you will find them very interesting
people."

"I have been told that she is quite a female high financier," I replied,
tacitly accepting Craig's commission. "Her story is that her claim is
situated near the mine of a group of powerful American capitalists, who
are opposed to having any competition, and on the strength of that
story she has been raking in the money right and left. I don't know
Vanderdyke, never heard of him before, but no doubt he has some equally
interesting game."

"Don't let them think you connect them with the case, however,"
cautioned Craig.

Early the next morning I started out on my quest for facts, though not
so early but that Kennedy had preceded me to his work in his laboratory.
It was not very difficult to get Mrs. Ralston to talk about her troubles
with the government. In fact, I did not even have to broach the subject
of the death of Templeton. She volunteered the information that in his
handling of her case he had been very unjust to her, in spite of the
fact that she had known him well a long time ago. She even hinted that
she believed he represented the combination of capitalists who
were using the government to aid their own monopoly and prevent the
development of her mine. Whether it was an obsession of her mind,
or merely part of her clever scheme, I could not make out. I noted,
however, that when she spoke of Templeton it was in a studied,
impersonal way, and that she was at pains to lay the blame for the
governmental interference rather on the rival mine-owners.

It quite surprised me when I found from the directory that Vanderdyke's
office was on the floor below in the same building. Like Mrs. Ralston's,
it was open, but not doing business, pending the investigation by the
Post-Office Department.

Vanderdyke was a type of which I had seen many before. Well dressed to
the extreme, he displayed all those evidences of prosperity which are
the stock in trade of the man with securities to sell. He grasped
my hand when I told him I was going to present the other side of the
post-office cases and held it between both of his as if he had known me
all his life. Only the fact that he had never seen me before prevented
his calling me by my first name. I took mental note of his stock of
jewellery, the pin in his tie that might almost have been the Hope
diamond, the