details are your concern. What I
want is results. We won't waste time. You're to be back here by
daylight--only see that there's no come-back."

"Leave it to me!" returned the Weasel, with assurance. "How's dere
goin' ter be any come-back? Mittel keeps it in his safe, don't he? Well,
gentlemen's houses has been robbed before--an' dis job'll be a good one.
De geographfy stunt youse wants gets pinched wid de rest, dat's all. It
disappears--see? Who's ter know youse gets yer claws on it? It's just
lost in de shuffle."

"Right!" agreed Hamvert briskly--and from his inside pocket produced
a package of crisp new bills, yellow-backs, and evidently of large
denominations. "Half down and half on delivery--that's our deal."

"Dat's wot!" assented the Weasel curtly.

Hamvert began to count the bills.

Jimmie Dale's hand stole into his pocket, and came out with his
handkerchief and the thin metal insignia case. From the latter, with its
little pair of tweezers, he took out one of the adhesive gray seals.
His eyes warily on the two men, he dropped the seal on his handkerchief,
restored the thin metal case to his pocket--and in its stead the
blue-black ugly muzzle of his automatic peeped from between his fingers.

"Five thousand down," said Hamvert, pushing a pile of notes across the
table, and tucking the remainder back into his pocket; "and the other
five's here for you when you get back with the map. Ordinarily, I
wouldn't pay a penny in advance, but since you want it that way and
the map's no good to you while the rest of the long green is, I--" He
swallowed his words with a startled gulp, clutched hastily at the money
on the table, and began to struggle up from his chair to his feet.

With a swift, noiseless side-step through the open door, Jimmie Dale was
standing in the room.

Jimmie Dale's tones were conversational. "Don't get up," said Jimmie
Dale coolly. "And take your hand off that money!"

The Weasel, whose back had been to the door, squirmed around in his
chair--and in his turn stared into the muzzle of Jimmie Dale's revolver,
while his jaw dropped and sagged.

"Good-evening, Weasel," observed Jimmie Dale casually. "I seem to be in
luck to-night. I got into that room next door, but an empty room is slim
picking. And then it seemed to me I heard some one in here mention five
thousand dollars twice, which makes ten thousand, and which happens to
be just exactly the sum I need at the present moment--if I can't g