e, or fall
down, it will mean several spaces in Joliet, so have a care. I'll put
you easy on one point. Neither you, nor London Bill, nor any of the pals
you'll put into this game about the middle of May, will get the collar.
You have my word for that."

"Your word goes with me, Inspector," interjected Dan, plainly relieved,
and bending to his chianti as though after all it might not be red
poison.

"Good; my word goes with you--which is fortunate for you. These are your
orders: You're to say never a word; and you're to proceed with this as
though nothing queer was in the wind. As fast as you know anything, you
will find that I'll call for it. Do whatever this black-bearded party
asks; go with him as far as he wants to go, and go with your eyes shut.
I'll step in and get him when the time comes; he's the one I'm after.
Now you understand: say nothing, do whatever the black-beard desires;
and when I want to see you I'll send. And be careful about London Bill;
he's foxy. That was why I let you go by me a moment ago; I didn't know
but Bill was fly enough to tail you here. He'll be gone, however, in a
day, or at the most two, and then you'll have no more risk with Bill."

"How did you know Bill was goin' to-morrow? It wasn't settled thirty
minutes ago."

"I know it just as I know that you, about May fifteenth, will pick up a
dozen or more pals who are whole crooks and half sailors; that you will
then leave on a boat, probably a steam yacht, May twenty-sixth, bound
for Washington; and that the job of bin-cracking you will engage in is
to be pulled off May twenty-seventh to twenty-ninth inclusive."

"You know more'n me, Inspector," observed Dan, with wonder undisguised.

"If I didn't I wouldn't be telling you what to do. That's all, Dan; have
you got your orders straight?"

"Straight as a gun," declared Dan, wiping the last drops of the chianti
from his mouth.

"Screw out then," commanded Inspector Val, "and come only when I send
for you."

Two days later, a laborer, clean-shaven and of rather superior exterior,
fastened a tape measure to the iron cover of a manhole that opened into
the drain that ran by the side of the Treasury Building. Tape fastened,
the laborer unwound its length along the asphalt for perhaps one hundred
feet. Then he began to re-wind the tape into its circular box. As he
followed the incoming tape towards the end that was fastened to the
manhole cover, winding as he went, he paused for the gho