should. Thousands and thousands of men are
of Mack Nolan's height and general build. This man looked like a
doctor or a dentist perhaps. Beyond the matter of size, similarity to
Mack Nolan ceased. The Cadillac man wore a vandyke beard and colored
glasses, and a panama and light gray business suit. Casey set him down
in his mental catalog as "some town feller" and assumed that they had
nothing in common.

Yet Mack Nolan heard nearly every word spoken by Smiling Lou, Casey and
Jim Cassidy. (Readers are so inquisitive about these things that I
felt I ought to tell you--else you'll be worrying as hard as Casey Ryan
did later on. I'm soft-hearted, myself; I never like to worry a reader
more than is absolutely necessary. So I'm letting you in, hoping you'll
get an added kick out of Casey's further maneuvers).

The Cadillac car, I should explain, was only one of Mack Nolan's little
secrets. There is a very good garage at Goffs, not many miles from
Juniper Wells. A matter of an hour's driving was sufficient at any
time for Mack Nolan to make the exchange. And no man at Goffs would
think it very strange that the owner of a Cadillac should prefer to
drive a Ford over rough, desert trails to his prospect in the
mountains. Mack Nolan, as I have told you before, had a way with him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

With a load of booze in the car and Jim Cassidy by his side, Casey Ryan
drove down the long, eucalyptus-shaded avenue that runs past the
balloon school at Arcadia and turned into the Foothill Boulevard. Half
a mile farther on a Cadillac roadster honked and slid past them,
speeding away toward Monrovia. But Casey Ryan was busy talking
chummily with Jim Cassidy, and he scarcely knew that a car had passed.

The money he had been given for Smiling Lou had been used to pay for
this new load of whisky, and Casey found himself wishing that he could
get word of it to Mack Nolan. Still, Nolan's oversight in the matter
of arranging for communication between them did not bother Casey much.
He was doing his part; if Mack Nolan failed to do his, that was no
fault of Casey Ryan's.

At Fontana, where young Kenner had stopped for gas on that eventful
first trip of Casey's, Casey slowed down also, for the same purpose,
half tempted to call up the Little Woman on long distance while the gas
tank was being filled. But presently the matter went clean from his
mind--and this was the reason:

A speed cop whose motorcycle stood inconsp