just come in--and we're to let him have it as soon as we can.
Oh, yes, I understand you. 'Platinum, galena, cyanide, Alton, oxide.
In a vise.' You've got that, Nellie? Do I know when Hallam will get
it? No, I don't. Good-night."

Now a man would probably have at once enclosed the message in an
envelope, but a Western business lady not infrequently takes a kindly
interest in the private concerns of her employer, especially if they
are not quite clear to her. Accordingly Miss Holder sat down and read
over the message, after which she shook her head.

"I wonder what it's all about, and I don't like that Hallam," she said.
"He's an insect. A crawling one with slimy feet, and to pin a big
diamond in front of one as he does is horrible taste. Give me the
book, Nellie. It reads like our cypher. Oh, yes. 'Instructions to
hand. No legal improvements done and claim unrecorded. Will
relocate.' Now we've nothing that silver stands for, and it reads quite
straight. 'Will relocate the silver claim as soon as prospecting is
possible. Alton cannot take action.' He means he's got him in a vise."

Miss Holder crossed the landing and tapped at the door of the adjoining
room, while Nellie Townshead walked to the window and looked down on
the city. It stretched away before her, silent for once under its
blinking lights, sidewalk and pavement lying empty far down beneath the
mazy wires and towering buildings, but she saw little of it as she
glanced towards the block where the Somasco Consolidated had their
offices. The message had troubled her, for she recalled many
kindnesses shown to her and her father by the owners of Somasco ranch.
She also owed one of them a reparation, for she had seen the man who
miscarried the message in Vancouver, and knew that the delay, when the
ranch was sold, was not Alton's fault. Nor had she forgiven Hallam for
the greed and cunning which had effected her father's ruin, and now it
seemed that he held Alton of Somasco and his partner in his grip. That
there was treachery at work she felt sure, and grew hot with
indignation as she determined that if she could prevent it neither
Alton--nor his partner--should suffer.

It might have occurred to a man that what she contemplated implied a
breach of confidence, but Nellie Townshead was a high-spirited girl,
and only realized that Hallam was about to wrong her friends just then.

There would also be no difficulty in warning him, for Alton had t