es to within ten
thousand dollars of the amount your Gavitt fellow walked away with in
New Orleans. Also, number three, Mr. Griswold acted very much like a man
who had lost all he had in the world when I told him that Miss Grierson
and I had found no money in his suit-cases; and----"

"That is the weak link in your chain, isn't it?" objected the daughter.
"You remember he told me on the boat that he had lost the money?"

Again the father took counsel of the long-stemmed pipe.

"It might be," he said, after a reflective pause. "It would be, if Miss
Grierson could be safely eliminated from the equation. Unhappily, she
can't be."

"I don't care!" came from the depths of the porch rocking-chair. "If
this miserable detective arrests him and appeals to me, I shall simply
refuse to know anything about it! I wish you'd tell this man Broffin so
when you meet him again."

As before, the good little doctor had recourse to his pipe, and it was
not until his daughter got up to go in that he said gently: "One other
word, Charlie, girl: are you altogether sure that the wish isn't father
to the thought--about Griswold?"

"Don't be absurd, papa!" she said scornfully, passing swiftly behind his
chair to reach the door; and with that answer he was obliged to be
content.

XXVIII

BROKEN LINKS

It was on the second day after the pistol-buying incident in Simmons &
Kleifurt's that Broffin, wishful for solitude and a chance to think in
perspective, took to the woods.

In the moment of lost temper, when he had threatened angrily to play an
indefinite waiting game, prolonging it until his man should walk into
the trap, nothing had really been farther from his intentions. As a
matter of fact, there were the best of business reasons why he should
not waste another day in following, or attempting to follow, the cold
trail. Other cases were pressing, and his daily mail from the New
Orleans head-quarters brought urgings impatient and importunate; and on
the third day following the sleeveless interview with the doctor's
daughter he had paid his bill at the Winnebago House and had packed his
grip for the southward flight by the afternoon train.

Twenty minutes before train-time a telegram from the New Orleans office
had reopened the closed and crossed-off account of the Bayou State
Security robbery. It was a bare line in answer to his own wire advising
the office that he was about to return, but its significance was out of
all p