"

"Well, I'm sorry that I troubled you," Farland said. "And now, I'll get
out--if you'll do me a small favor."

"Anything, Farland."

"I see you have a typewriter in the corner, and I'd like to write a
short note to leave uptown."

"Just step outside and dictate it to one of my stenographers," said
George Lerton.

"That'd be too much trouble," Farland replied. "It's only a few lines,
and I can pound a typewriter pretty good. Besides, this is a little
confidential report that I would not care to have your stenographer know
anything about."

"Oh, I see! Help yourself!"

Farland got up and hurried over to the typewriter. He put a sheet of
paper in the machine, wrote a few lines, folded the sheet and put it
into his coat pocket.

"Well, I'm much obliged," he said. "I think we'll have Sid out of
trouble before long."

"Let us hope so!" George Lerton said.

There was something in the tone of his voice, however, that belied the
words he spoke. Farland gave him a single, rapid glance, but the
expression of Lerton's face told him nothing. Lerton was a broker and
used to big business deals. He was a master of the art of the blank
countenance, and Jim Farland knew it well.

Farland had said nothing concerning Kate Gilbert, for he was not ready
to let George Lerton know that he suspected any connection of Miss
Gilbert with the Rufus Shepley case. Farland was not certain himself
what that connection would be, and he knew it would be foolish to say
anything that would put Lerton on guard and make the mystery more
difficult of solution.

He thanked Lerton once more and departed. Out in the corridor and some
distance from the Lerton office, he took from his pocket the note he had
written on Lerton's private typewriter and glanced at it quickly.
Farland was merely verifying what he had noticed as he had typed the
note.

"That was a lucky hunch about that typewriter," he told himself. "This
case is going to be interesting, all right--and for several persons."

Farland had noticed particularly the typewritten notes that had been
received by the clothing merchant and the barber. There were two certain
keys that were battered in a peculiar manner, and another key that was
out of alignment.

He knew now, by glancing at the lines he had written himself, that those
other notes had been typed on the same machine. He guessed that it had
been George Lerton, the broker, who had sent those notes and the money
to the barber an