e
bonds, and the bank backed you up in it, why I--I went to see him."

"You wrote him first. Why did you send a cipher letter?"

"Because I suspicioned the whole thing was a plant, just like it
turned out to be, an' I didn't want to get an old pal into no trouble.
The cipher's an old one we used years ago, in the gang, an' I know he
wouldn't forget it. I never thought he'd squeal on me to Blaine!"

"He didn't. The letter--er--came into Blaine's possession, and he read
it for himself."

"He did?" Pennold looked up quickly, with a flash of interest on his
sullen face. "He's a wonder, that Blaine! If he'd only got started the
other way, the way we did, what a crook he would have made! As it is,
I guess we ain't afraid of all the organized police on earth combined,
as much as we are of him. It's a queer thing he ain't been shot up or
blown into eternity long ago, an' yet they say he's never guarded. He
must be a cool one! Anyhow, I'm glad Jimmy didn't squeal on me; I'd
hate to think it of him. When I went to see him about the bonds, he
wouldn't have nothin' to do with them. Swore they was a plant, he did,
an' warned me off. He seemed real excited, considerin' he had nothin'
to worry about, but I took his word for it, an' beat it. That's the
last I seen of him."

"Did you send your nephew to him?"

"Me?" Pennold's tones quickened in surprise. "I ain't seen him in a
long while, an' I don't believe he even remembers old Jimmy; he was
only a kid when Jimmy went up the river. What would I send Charley
for, when I'd gone myself an' it hadn't worked?"

It was evident to Morrow that the man he was interrogating was
ignorant of Brunell's connection with the Lawton case, and he changed
his tactics.

"Tell me about Charley. You say you tried to do right by him."

"Of course I did! Wasn't he my brother's boy?" Pennold hunched over
the table, and continued eagerly: "Mame kept him clean an' fed, an' we
sent him to public school, just like any other kid. But it wasn't no
use. He had it in him to go wrong, without the wit to get away with
it. He was caught pinchin' lead piping when he was sixteen, an' sent
to Elmira for three years. Them three years was his finish. When he
came out he'd had what you'd call a graduate course in every form of
crookedness under the sun, from fellers harder an' cleverer than he'd
ever thought of bein', an' he was bitter besides, an' desperate. There
wasn't no chance for him then, an' he just drifted